It should be remembered that culture does for soil what it does for men and women.  It mellows, brings it up, and renders it capable of finer products.  Much, indeed, can be done with a crude piece of land in a single year when treated with the thoroughness that has been suggested, and some strong-growing vegetables may be seen at their best during the first season; but the more delicate vegetables thrive better with successive years of cultivation.  No matter how abundantly the ground may be enriched at first, time and chemical action are required to transmute the fertilizers into the best forms of plant-food, and make them a part of the very soil itself.  Plowing or spading, especially if done in late autumn, exposes the mould to the beneficial action of the air and frost, and the garden gradually takes on the refined, mellow, fertile character which distinguishes it from the ordinary field.

In dealing with a thin, sandy soil, one has almost to reverse the principles just given.  Yet there is no cause for discouragement.  Fine results, if not the best, can be secured.  In this case there is scarcely any possibility for a thorough preparation of the soil from the start.  It can gradually be improved, however, by making good its deficiencies, the chief of which is the lack of vegetable mould.  If I had such soil I would rake up all the leaves I could find, employ them as bedding for my cow and pigs (if I kept any), and spread the compost-heap resulting on the sandy garden.  The soil is already too light and warm, and it should be our aim to apply fertilizers tending to counteract this defect.  A nervous, excitable person should let stimulants alone, and take good, solid, blood-making food.  This illustration suggests the proper course to be taken.  Many a time I have seen action the reverse of this resulting disastrously.  For instance, a man carts on his light thin soil hot fermenting manure from the horse-stable, and plows it under.  Seeds are planted.  In the moist, cool, early spring they make a great start, feeling the impulse of the powerful stimulant.  There is a hasty and unhealthful growth; but long before maturity the days grow long and hot, drought comes, and the garden dries up.  Therefore every effort should be made to supply cool manures with staying qualities, such as are furnished by decayed vegetable matter composted with the cleanings of the cow-stable.  We thus learn the value of fallen leaves, muck from the swamp, etc.; and they also bring with them but few seeds of noxious vegetation.

On the other hand, stolid, phlegmatic clay requires the stimulus of manure from the horse-stable.  It can be plowed under at once, and left to ferment and decay in the soil.  The process of decomposition will tend to banish its cold, inert qualities, and make the ground loose, open, and amenable to the influences of frost, sun, and rain.