rest assured that your vegetables will not want for plant food and
that, if other conditions are favorable, you will have maximum crops.




CHAPTER VII

THE SOIL AND ITS PREPARATION


Having considered, as thoroughly as the limited space available
permitted, the matter of plant foods, we must proceed to the equally
important one of how properly to set the table, on or rather in, which
they must be placed, before the plants can use them.

As was noted in the first part of the preceding chapter, most tillable
soils contain the necessary plant food elements to a considerable
extent, but only in a very limited degree in _available_ forms.
They are locked up in the soil larder, and only after undergoing
physical and chemical changes may be taken up by the feeding roots of
plants. They are unlocked only by the disintegration and decomposition
of the soil particles, under the influence of cultivation--or
mechanical breaking up--and the access of water, air and heat.

The great importance of the part the soil must play in every garden
operation is therefore readily seen. In the first place, it is required
to furnish all the plant food elements--some seven in number, beside
the three, nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, already mentioned. In
the second, it must hold the moisture in which these foods must be