So there is no reason why you should not have a good lawn, as well as a good garden, if you will supply what the grass roots want. And it is true that the lawn is a genuine asset. The man who is too busy to bother with making a lawn, or to sit on it with his family in spare moments, even though it takes a good deal of contriving to spare those moments, is the man who, by and by, is going to complain that his boys and girls have left the old place, and that “farming is mighty expensive with all hired help.” Unless you have made yourself and your family happy, you will not have achieved success, no matter how much wealth you may get. Give your crops and your children what they need for their best development, and you will find nothing to complain of either in parenthood or in farming. CHAPTER XII. HOW TO WORK. If you are only just beginning to experiment with gardening, and feel that a fresh supply of fruits and vegetables from May until Christmas would satisfy you for the first year or so, you will find a plot 100 × 200 feet quite large enough to feed your family and a little more besides. If your plot has not been used for a long time, you will have to do your plowing, if you can, the fall before you plant it. This will give the frost a chance to sweeten the soil, and it is very likely to need a good deal of sweetening. Most yard soils have become acid, and in an acid soil little will grow. It comes from the earth having been so long packed down that the air has had no chance to circulate, and fresh air sweetens your soil just as it does your house. It is not good to put stable manure on an acid soil. What it wants is a little slaked lime or plaster, to help the sweetening process. Some scientists claim that we can find out whether or not soil is acid by the use of blue litmus paper, which you can get at any druggist’s. Open the soil to a depth of six inches and put in the litmus paper, drawing the earth close up to it. Examine it in 20 minutes, and if there is any acid present, the paper will have turned red. This test is still being experimented on.[4] If your land is in proper condition to manure, use about twenty-five heaping wagon-loads to the acre before plowing in the early spring, and then use a disc or cutaway harrow until you have made the soil as fine as dust. Then you have good planting conditions. How much of the discontent with farming and gardening may have arisen from the old method of planting in beds, it is hard to say. But that cause for dissatisfaction no longer exists. We now plant in long rows far enough apart to allow the use of the wheel-hoe in cultivating the large and small plants alike, without having to readjust the blades. The wheel-hoe is one of the most useful of farm tools, and has done away with most of the back-breaking work of hand-weeding.