Mulga

“ Carmichael went to the top of the low bluff, and informed me of the existence of low ridges, bounding the horizon in every direction except to the south-south-east, and that the intervening country appeared to be composed of sandhills, with casuarinas, or mulga scrubs.
In Baron von Mueller's extraordinary work on Select Extra-tropical Plants, with indications of their native countries, and some of their uses, these remarks occur:— “Acacia aneura, Ferd. v. Mueller. Arid desert—interior of extra tropic Australia. A tree never more than twenty-five feet high. The principal ‘mulga’ tree. Mr. ”

“ Where the soil was sandy or stony, it might be a scrub rather than a forest, of gnarled, twisted, and stunted oaks, or possibly thickets of sloe, birch, rowan, hawthorn, brambles, and briers.
Every stream would be "wild water" leaping down waterfalls and cutting out irregular, little woody ravines. Here and there boulders and escarpments of rock would break through the forest soil, which would be mossy, thick with undergrowth, and entangled with rotting fallen trunks and branches, crossing at every conceivable angle. The higher hills were covered by a dreary, sombre pine forest. ”

“ The trees of all the species stand more or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near. ”

“ If your soil is clayey, and holds water for this reason, it can be drained by porous tiles, sunk at intervals in the same way as meadow or hay land would be drained, that is if the size of your garden and the lay of the land warrants it. If, however, the roses are to be in separate beds or long borders, the earth can be dug out to the depth of two and a half or three feet, the good fertile portion being put on one side and the clay or yellow loam, if any there be, removed. ”

“ There is no half way in its growths, no shading off, so to speak, as elsewhere; not an isolated shrub, not a solitary tree, flourishes in the strange soil, but trees and shrubs crowd together as if for protection, and the clump, of whatever size or shape, ends abruptly, with the desert coming up to its very edge. Yet the soil, though it seems to be the driest and most unpromising of baked gray mud, needs nothing more than a [Pg 208] little water, to clothe itself luxuriantly; the course of a brook or even an irrigating ditch, if permanent, is marked by a thick and varied border of greenery. ”

“ In making a Flower Bed, see that the ground is well drained; that the subsoil is deep; that the land is in a mellow and friable condition, and that it is rich. Each fall it may have a mulch of rotted manure or of leaf-mold, which may be spaded under deeply in the spring; or the land may be spaded and left rough in the fall, which is a good practice when the soil has much clay. Make the Flower Beds as broad as possible, so that the roots of the grass running in from either side will not meet beneath the flowers and rob them of food and moisture. ”

“ The watering of a garden requires nearly as much judgment as the seasoning of a soup. Keep the soil well stirred and loose on the surface, going through the garden, where possible, with a rake; and if there is no room for a rake, stir gently with a trowel every five days or once a week. In this way moisture will be retained in the soil, since the loose earth acts as a mulch. ”

“ Roughly speaking, soils may be divided into heavy and light—those that hold wet and those that do not. The heavy kinds are mostly clay, though pure peat retains a great deal of moisture. The light soils are gravel, limestone, and sand. If you are used to a heavy clay soil, you will envy the people who have a light sandy one; and then some day when you come to work a hungry, sandy garden, you will wish for some of the sticky soil that is not easy to handle, but which many plants love. ”

“ Entering among the thickets, I find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding seasons, through which may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots of trees stretch frequently across the path; often a moss-grown brown log lies athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying substance,—into the heart of oak or pine. ”

“ What cannot a strong plow, a winter mellowing, and summer heats, incorporated with the pregnant turf, or a slight assistance of lime, loam, sand, rotten compost, discreetly mixed (as the case may require) perform even in the most unnatural and obstinate soil? And in such places where anciently woods have grown, but are now unkind to them, the fault is to be reformed by this care; and chiefly, by a sedulous extirpation of the old remainders of roots, and latent stumps, which by their mustiness, and other pernicious qualities, sowre the ground, and poyson the conception ”

“ If the garden soil be clayey, and adhesive, put on a covering of sand, three inches thick, and the same depth of well-rotted manure. Spade it in, as deep as possible, and mix it well. If the soil be sandy and loose, spade in clay and ashes. Ashes are good for all kinds of soil, as they loosen those which are close, hold moisture in those which are sandy, and destroy insects. The best kind of soil, is that, which will hold water the longest, without becoming hard, when dry. ”

“ Rake the mulch away from the plants that were given protection in fall as soon as the weather gets warm enough to start them to growing. Or it can be dug into the soil about them to act as a fertilizer. Get it out of sight, for it always gives the garden an untidy effect if left about the plants.
Go over the border plants and uproot all grass that has secured a foothold there. A space of a foot should be left about all shrubs and perennials in which nothing should be allowed to grow. ”

“ As there is no real soil on the mountain, this fine vegetation must derive its support from the air, the moisture in the thick moss, and the rotting leaves which sometimes lay in tangled damp masses, almost decayed into a black mould. ”

“ Stirring the surface soil with a fine rake as soon as it is partly dry after a rain, furnishes a mulch of dust which prevents the moisture in the lower earth escaping, because it checks the capillary process by which moisture travels to the surface and is carried into the air. The soil may be rich in the mineral and animal components which constitute plant-food, but unless moisture is present in sufficient quantities these are not available as sustenance for plants. ”

“ The rows may be opened with a small turning plow, or, for lesser areas, with a shovel. Place the nuts, a foot apart, carefully in the bottom of the furrow, cover with a hoe, roll the ground if the weather is dry, and then scarify the surface with a weeder or a light harrow to prevent evaporation of the soil moisture. Or the ground may be mulched with pine-straw, grass, leaves or other suitable material. If no mulch is applied, then the surface of the ground Should be cultivated shallow from time to time. ”

“ The Mulch.—In conserving the supply of water in the soil the mulch plays an important work. The dry air is constantly taking up the water from the surface of land, and when the surface is drier than the soil below, the moisture moves upward if there is no break in the structure of the surface soil. The mulch is a covering of material that does not readily permit the escape of water. ”

“ The soil in the forest is covered by a living ground cover of flowers, shrubs and young trees, and by a dead cover composed of leaves, twigs, dead branches, fallen trees, all of which interrupt the raindrop's journey to the ground. Even after the rain reaches the ground, only a small part of it goes off as surface run-off. The soil in the forest is loose and full of holes and channels made by decaying roots, earth worms, etc., so that the water is absorbed as fast as it reaches the soil. ”

“ The cool shades of the forest give rise to moist beds and currents of air, and the sod of grasses and the various flowering plants and shrubs thus fostered, together with the network and sponge of tree roots, absorb and hold back the rain and the waters from melting snow, compelling them to ooze and percolate and flow gently through the soil in streams that never dry. ”

“ This surface layer of loose, mellow soil is often spoken of as the earth-mulch. It answers much the same purpose as a mulch of straw or leaves in interposing a material between the moist soil and the air through which the moisture cannot rise. If this mulch is repaired as often as it should be, weeds cannot grow; but the object of the Tilling is more to make and maintain the mulch than to destroy weeds. The surface should be Tilled shallow in the growing season as often as it tends to become compact or encrusted. ”

“ The prairies were decorated with a growth of flowers that seemed as gorgeous and grand as the brilliancy of stars in the heavens, and exceed description. The soil is rich and fertile, from three to ten feet deep, and generally composed of a rich black mould, intermingled with clay and sand. ”

“ When the bushes are young, not covering the ground, other crops are grown between the rows, but as the bushes attain their full size, standing after trimming, waist to breast high, the ground between is usually thickly covered with straw, leaves or grass and weeds from the hill lands, which serve as a mulch, as a fertilizer, as a means of preventing washing on the hillsides, and to force the rain to enter the soil uniformly where it falls. ”

“ The soil, except upon the very tops of the ridges, is extremely rich and fertile, watered by a great number of rivulets of excellent water, and covered with fruit trees of various kinds, some of which are of a stately growth and thick foliage, so as to form one continued wood; and even the tops of the ridges, though in general they are bare, and burnt up by the sun, are, in some parts, not without their produce. ”

“ It is well after the borders are completed to remove the top soil, in which no roots are to be found, every two or three years, and to replace it with a mixture of good loam, rotten manure, lime rubbish and bone meal, to the depth of 6 or 7 in. A mulch of half-decayed stable litter is useful to prevent loss of moisture in summer. ”

“ Again, wherever the soil breaks out in simple blue country, whether in the river shore, or the broken roadside bank, or the plowed field, in nine cases out of ten it is excessively warm in its color, being either gravel or clay, the black vegetable soil never remaining free of vegetation. The warm [Pg 129] tone of these beds of soil is an admirable relief to the blue of the distances, which we have taken as the distinctive feature of the country, tending to produce the perfect light without which no landscape can be complete. ”

“ As soon as rain comes to wet the earth thoroughly, we think it is better to remove the mulch. Nothing is then gained by permitting it to remain. Mellowing the surface soil about the trees, thus keeping it free from grass and weeds, is then the most that is needed. ”

“ The land thus railed round had been cleared for some years; the grass is good, and the stumps few in number. Leaving this, we came to the stubble of last year, where the stumps were more numerous, and then to the land only cleared in the spring, covered thickly with charred stumps, the soil rich and black, and wheat springing up in all directions. Beyond this there was nothing but bush. A scramble through a bush, though very interesting in its way, produces disagreeable consequences. ”

“ Mulching.—In muck soils it will not be found necessary to mulch the ground around the plants after setting, but some kind of a covering is desirable on sandy and clay soils. As soon as the plants are in position and before any water is applied, cover the ground for a distance of 8 or 10 inches on either side with any finely divided material that will shade the top of the soil and prevent a crust being formed after watering; half-rotted manure is preferable for this, as it aids the growth by its fertilizing qualities. ”

“ Even the mud banks dividing these fertile areas are made to yield on the sides cabbages and lettuces and on the tops wheat and poppy. There are no fences. You see before you a forest of mountains, made a dark leaden color by thick mists, from out of which gradually come the never-ending pictures of green and purple and brown and yellow and gold, which roll hither and thither under a cloudy sky in indescribable confusion. ”

“ Under the shade of the trees and mulched thickly by leaves, the forest floor usually stays moist. Although the leaves tend to mat where they contact the soil, the wet, somewhat compacted layer is thin enough to permit air to be in contact with all of the materials and to enter the soil. ”

“ Almost anything that will fulfill these indications will answer—either stones, chips, boards, twigs, saw-dust, tan-bark, weeds, straw, either long or cut, coarse manure, hay, freshly-cut grass, or, perhaps the very best for all the purposes of mulching, leaves themselves, except that they are difficult to retain in their place. A combination of leaves and twigs, small branches or weeds, may be made to answer a very good purpose, for winter mulching especially. ”

“ The mulching must receive the credit for much of this thrift, for it protected the soil from the rays of the sun and invited the deep moisture to rise toward the surface. Few people realize the amount of water that enters into the daily consumption of a tree. It is said that the four acres of leaf surface of a large elm will transpire or yield to evaporation eight tons of water in a day, and that it takes more than five hundred tons of water to produce one ton of hay, wheat, oats, or other crop. ”