Start cultivating

 When your young plants appear above the soil it is time to start cultivating. First thing brake up your soil to stop a surface crust forming.

This must be done to allow the air to get into the soil, which is necessary for the roots of the plants to get at the plant food. This action will also help keep down the weeds and, most important of all, it helps to conserve the moisture in the soil.

If you have had anything to do with the cultivation of the soil, you will have noticed that when its surface is stirred up after a rain it quickly dries out. It will also have been noticed that, if any one has walked over this soil just after it has been stirred up, the soil in the footprints remains moist.

Why is this? It is simply that capillary action has been broken by the loosening of the surface, and the soil-water rises to the loosened soil and no farther. On the other hand, capillary action has been restored in those places where the soil has been compacted by walking on it, and the surface here is moist because moisture is continually being supplied from the store below. This moisture just as continually evaporates during dry weather and is lost as far as the plant roots are concerned.

Breaking up the surface soil provides a dust mulch or soil blanket which shades the moist soil below from the sun’s rays, and in a large measure prevents evaporation. Therefore, after every rain, just as soon as the soil has dried out sufficiently so that it does not stick to the tool used, the surface should be cultivated.