“The value of this work is to get the soil of the bed entirely worked over.  Most people dig but poorly.  Digging is hard work; so a boy digs a little here, and a little there, throughout the seed bed and thinks the work is all done.  It is really done when the above method is used.  And after all we have said about the necessity for airing soil, and the need of stirring things up so that the good bacteria may do their work, I know you will all see the point immediately.

“Mere spading of the ground is not sufficient.  The soil is still left in lumps.  Always as one spades one should break up the big lumps.  But even so the ground is in no shape for planting.  Ground must be very fine indeed to plant in, because seeds can get very close indeed to fine particles of soil.  But the large lumps leave large spaces which no tiny root hair can penetrate.  A seed is left stranded in a perfect waste when planted in chunks of soil.  A baby surrounded with great pieces of beefsteak would starve.  A seed among large lumps of soil is in a similar situation.  The spade never can do this work of pulverizing soil.  But the rake can.  That’s the value of the rake.  It is a great lump breaker, but will not do for large lumps.  If the soil still has large lumps in it take the hoe.

“Many people handle the hoe awkwardly.  Get up, Jay, and show us just how to hold it!  Walk along as you hoe, drawing the hoe toward you.  The chief work of this implement is to rid the soil of weeds and stir up the top surface.  It is used in summer to form that mulch of dust so valuable in retaining moisture in the soil.  I often see boys hoe as if they were going to chop into atoms everything around.  Hoeing should never be such vigorous exercise as that.  Spading is vigorous, hard work, but not hoeing and raking.

“After lumps are broken use the rake to make the bed fine and smooth.  Now the great piece of work is done.  To be sure I have said nothing of fertilizing.  The kind and amount of fertilizer depends on the kind of soil.  Well-rotted manure being the best all-around fertilizer, we will say that we have spaded that into the seed bed after the trenching operation is over.

“Now the plan made on paper comes into practical use, and garden stakes, cord and a means of measuring are the things necessary to have on hand.  Jay and Albert have made their garden stakes one foot in length.  They will serve as a good rule in furrow making.  On their hoe handles Jack and Elizabeth have marked two feet off into inches.  This is another scheme for measuring.  George has a pole four feet long which he uses.  This has inches marked on one foot of its length.  Katharine has a seventy-five foot tape measure.  And Leston and Helena have made this tool I have here in my hand.  It looks like a wooden toothed rake with its teeth eight inches apart.  This dragged over the surface of a nice, fine garden bed marks off furrows.  It makes the most regular furrows you ever saw because it cannot help itself.  Miriam used a board last summer.  She laid this across her seed bed, kneeling on it, then she drew a dibber along the board’s straight edge, pressing firmly into the soil with the dibber.  This also made a good straight furrow.