TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of the chapter.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
THE GARDEN YARD
[Illustration: THE FINEST SUBURBAN FARM PRODUCE.]
THE
GARDEN YARD
A HANDBOOK OF
INTENSIVE FARMING
BY
BOLTON HALL
Author of “THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY,” “A LITTLE LAND AND A
LIVING,” “THE GAME OF LIFE,” “THINGS AS THEY ARE”
_With an Introduction by_
N. O. NELSON
_Revised by_
HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
_President and Editor “Rural New Yorker” and_
SAMUEL FRASER
_Manager Fall Brooks Farm, Geneseo, N. Y._
PHILADELPHIA
DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER
610 S. Washington Square
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DAVID MCKAY
WHAT IS IN THIS BOOK
AND WHERE TO FIND IT.
CONTENTS-INDEX.
PAGE
PREFACE 9-12
Becoming a gardener 9, 10, 11
Intensive Farm, the 9, 16
Some sorts of critics 10
INTRODUCTION 13-20
A practical offer 14
Co-operation 17-20
Farm for nothing, a 15
How much land is needed 15
Obstacles—how to overcome them 14
The only life 13
What intensive cultivation means 16
CHAPTER I.—THE GARDEN YARD 21-29
Brain value 24
Buildings you need 29
Choosing your farm 27
Fortunes, hidden 22-25
How to grow rich 28, 29
Land and crops 26
Location for field crops 21
Location for garden crops 21
Market importance 26
Mistakes and their cost 22
Money, in what 24
The value of ownership 28
Unknown capacity 21
Work not enough 25
CHAPTER II.—SOIL 30-41
An unusual use 31
Best soil, the 36
Failure your own fault 41
“Good” soil 33
Humus 40, 72, 73, 74, 86
Moisture, how to get and hold it 34, 36
Soil—How it was made 30, 31
“ Its contents 31
“ Texture 34
“ What it is 30
Soils to avoid 37
Surface and subsoil 32
Tillage 37-40
Tilth 36, 37
CHAPTER III.—SOIL FERTILITY 42-48
Soil fertility—what it is 42
Agricultural Department’s crop work 46, 48
Help it offers 48
Limited crops 46
Nature and the abandoned farm 42, 43
Seeds, Bob’s solution 43, 45
Types of soil in the U. S. 46
Whitney’s (Prof.) idea 45
CHAPTER IV.—LOCATION 49-50
How to buy, clear, build 49
Land you can’t afford to use 49
Manure and watering 49, 50
Market 50
To find out where and how 49
CHAPTER V.—SEEDS 51-53
Houses, good seed 52
Ideal, the 51
Planting dates 53
Seed test 52
Use only the best 51
CHAPTER VI.—PLANT BREEDING 54-56
Plant breeding—what it is 54
Good farmers and breeding 54
How to improve 54
Professional breeders 54
Selection and variations 55
“Sports” 56
CHAPTER VII.—PLANT NEEDS 57-61
Plant needs—what they are 57
Foods, three sure 58
Light, degrees of 57, 58
Lime values 59
Medicines 59
Protectors 60, 61
Temperature 59
Under- and over-feeding 58
Water, effect of 57
CHAPTER VIII.—CROP ROTATION 62-65
Farming a business 62
Special crops 62
Value of rotation 63, 64, 65, 81
CHAPTER IX.—WEEDS 66-68
Weeds—how to know them 66
Common weeds 66
“ “ How to destroy them 67
“ “ Their use 68
CHAPTER X.—INSECTS AND DISEASES 69-71
Causes, some 69
How transmitted 70
Preventives 70
Preventing attacks 69
The little we know 69
Weeds as breeders 71
CHAPTER XI.—RE-SOILING 72-77
Best way to do it 73
Cleaning up 74
How to preserve it 76
Lawn, the 75
Misleading term 72
Prepared humus 74
Success, real 77
What we really do 72
CHAPTER XII.—HOW TO WORK 78-89
Grouping 80
How to plant 79
“ “ run rows 80
Keep soil busy 82
Manuring 79
Preparing the plot 78
Rotation 81
Test for acid 78
Transplanting 81
Companion cropping 82
Cellar growing 89
Drainage 82, 83
Drought, protection against 87
How we learn 88
Irrigation 82
Sewage 86, 87
Small area crops 88
Things that pay 88
Tools, keeping them clean 84, 85
Use brains 88
Waste water value 86
PART II.
CHAPTER XIII.—ROOT CROPS 90-105
Radishes 91
Culture 92
Enemies 93
Needs 93
Varieties 93
When to sow 92
Beets 94
As greens 95
Enemies 96
Fertilizers, special 96, 97
Marketing 97
Planting 95
Tillage 96
Where to grow 94
Yield 96
Carrots 97
How to sow 97
Soil preparation 97
Thinning 98
Types 98
Yield 99
Turnips 99
Easy to grow 99
Cowhorn turnip 44
How to plant 100
Root maggot 100
Soil 99
Thinning 100
Parsnips 100
Cultivation 101
Freedom from disease 102
Sowing 101
Thorough preparation 101
Yield 102
Salsify 102
Kitchen use only 102
Returns 103
Soil requirements 102
Types, modified 102, 103
Horse-radish 103
Grown from “sets” 103
How planted 104
Tillage 104
Yield 104
CHAPTER XIV.—TUBER CROPS 106-110
Potatoes 106
Early potatoes 108
Enemies and diseases 108
How to plant 107
Seed, potato 107
Soils, best 106
Spraying 108
Yield, average 106
“ good 106
“ phenomenal 218-225
“ possible 106
Sweet Potatoes 109
Home of 109
Climate 109
Cultivation 109, 110
Enemies 110
Soil 109
CHAPTER XV.—BULB CROPS 111-118
How to propagate 111
Needs, their 111
Seed-bed crops 111
Leeks 111
How grown 111
Product 111
Storage 111
Ciboule 112
Cives 112
Garlic 111
Shallot 112
Onion, Welsh 112
Onions 112
Early crop 114
Enemies 118
Fertilizing 113
Growing 112
Handling and storing 116
“Multiplier” onions 115
New onion culture 115
Season, main 114
Selling onions 117
“Sets” 114
Sorting 117
“Top”-onions 114
Weeding 114
Yields 118
CHAPTER XVI.—COLE CROPS 119-133
Meaning of name 119
Why grown 119
Brussels Sprouts 127
Soil, food and tillage needs 127
Successful growing 128
Cabbage 119
Acre yield, an 121
Crops, two 120
Essentials for growing 119
Fertilizing 120
Field-grown 121
Hot-bed plants 121
Insects and diseases 122
Locality, effect of 122
Marketing 121
Planting 123, 124
Profits in cabbage 123
Protection from insects 125
Quick first crop 123
Second crop 125
Cauliflower 129
Good seed necessary 129
Growing seed 130
Tillage, right 130
Where it grows best 129
Kale 126
Better for frost 126
Collards 127
Cultivation 126
Enemies 127
How sown 126
Southern kale 127
Kohlrabi 131
Best varieties 131
How to thin 131
Insects, diseases and cures 131, 132, 133
Its family 131
“ uses 131
CHAPTER XVII.—POT-HERB CROPS 134-140
Characteristics 134
Needs 134
What they are 134
Chard 137
Dandelion 138
Characteristics 138
Harvesting 139, 140
Tillage 139
Mustard 137
Where grown 137
Soil requirements 138
Purslane 140
Spinach 134
Forced spinach 136
How sown 137
How to sow 135
New Zealand spinach 136
Where and when grown 134
CHAPTER XVIII.—SALAD CROPS 141-160
What they are 141
What they need 141
Celeriac 159
How eaten 159
How to grow 159
Soil and tillage 159
Transplanting 159
Celery 150
Blanching 154, 155, 156
Care in tilling 153, 154
Diseases 158
Early and late crop 153
Fertilizing 153
How to sow 151
Loss in sprouting 152
Marketing 157
Seed-bed crop 150
Soil requirements 150
Storing 157
Thinning 152
Transplanting 152
Varieties 158
Where it grows best 150, 151
Chicory 145
How to grow 145
Salad plant 145
Use of chicory roots 146
Corn Salad 148
Cool-season crop 148
How and where to plant 148
Yield 149
Cress 146
How and where to grow 146, 147
How to plant 148
Varieties 146
Endive 144
Blanching 144
How to sow 144
Season, its 144
Soil and tillage 144
Use, its 145
Lettuce 142
Companion-crop 143
Culture 142
Growing in the open 143
“ under glass 143
Nature 142
Sowing and thinning 143
Succession-crop 143
Yield 143
Parsley 149
Easy to grow 149
Nature 149
Uses 149
Salad Chervil 149
Culture 150
Ready for use 150
Varieties 150
CHAPTER XIX.—PULSE CROPS 161-172
What they are 161
What they need 161
Beans 166-172
Bush and pole beans 169
Enemies 171, 172
Lima beans 167, 170
Ornamental uses 170
Planting 170
Preparing the soil 167
String beans 166
Where they grow 171
Where and when to sow 166
Peas 161-166
Early crops 162
Enemies 163, 165
Pea values 162, 163
Planting 161
Soil requirements 161
Varieties 163
CHAPTER XX.—SOLANACEOUS CROPS 173-182
Crops included 173
Nature and requirements 173
Eggplants 179, 180
Enemies 181
Harvesting 180
Marketing 180
Planting 179
Tillage 180
Transplanting 179, 180
Treatment required 179
Husk Tomato 182
Peppers 181
Cultivation 181
Growth of demand 181
Starting 181
Transplanting 181
Uses 182
Varieties 182
Tomatoes 173
Cultivation 174
Fertilizing 174
Harvesting 178
Racks, cheap 166, 167
Sowing seed 173
Tillage 174
Training and its value 175
Varieties 179
Where grown 173
Yield 179
CHAPTER XXI.—VINE OR CUCURBITOUS CROPS 183-191
What they are 183
“ “ need 183
Why you fail 183
How to succeed 183
When and where to plant 184
Enemies 184
Cucumbers and Gherkin 185
Planting in hills 185
Uses 186
Varieties 186
Yield 186
Muskmelon 186
Enemies 187
Planting 187
Varieties 187
Where grown 187
Yield 187
Pumpkin and Squash 189
Differences 190
Enemies 191
Uses 190
Varieties 190-191
Watermelon 187
Cultivation 188
Enemies 189
Testing 189
Uncertain crop 187
Where and how grown 188
CHAPTER XXII.—UNCLASSIFIED ANNUALS 192-197
What they include 192
“ “ need 192
Martynia 197
Okra or Gumbo 196
Cultivation 197
Enemies 197
Nature 196
Uses 196
Where and why grown 196
Sweet Corn 192
Cultivation 193, 194, 195
Enemies 196
Important crop 192
Marketing 195
Preparation for planting 193
Where it thrives 192
Yield 196
CHAPTER XXIII.—HERBS, SWEET AND CONDIMENTAL 198-200
Varieties 198
Classes 198
Growing 198, 199
Annuals 199
Perennials 200
CHAPTER XXIV.—PERENNIAL CROPS 201-215
What they are 201
“ “ need 201
Asparagus 201
Cultivation 201
Enemies 206, 207
Growing from seed 203
Harvesting 204
Marketing 205
Planting 202
Soil requirements 201
Tillage 202
Winter protection 205
Yield 206
Rhubarb 208
Cellar plots 210
Forced growth 210, 211
Nature, hardy 208
New culture 209
Planting 208
Profitable growing 209
Soil needs 208
Yield 211
Docks and Sorrels 211
Varieties 211
Artichoke 212
Jerusalem and French Globe 212
Sowing 212
Stock feed 213
Uses 214
Ways of the artichoke 213, 214
Winter mulch 213
Yield 214
Sea-kale 214
Blanching 215
Care 215
How it grows 214
CHAPTER XXV.—SPECIALITIES 216-226
Asparagus 218
Celery 218
Chestnuts 217
Mushrooms 218
Onions and potatoes 218
300 bushels to the acre 218, 225
Other specialties 226
Specializing and profits 216, 217
Strawberries 225
CHAPTER XXVI.—WATCHING AND SPRAYING 227-236
Arsenical sprays 233
Bordeaux mixture, what it will do and how to make it 229, 230
Emulsions 235
Kerosene emulsions 234
Manufacture and use 234, 235
Need of watching 227
Paris green 232
Spraying as a remedy 228
Spraying mixture 228, 235
Uses 232
Value of spraying, the 235
CHAPTER XXVII.—FERTILIZERS 237-249
Best are cheapest 241, 242, 243
Care of manure, the 240
Natural and chemical 237, 238
What each contains 238, 239
What fertilizer is 237
Wire basket, soil needs test 244, 249
CHAPTER XXVIII.—MORE ABOUT FERTILIZERS 250-257
Experiments show, what 250, 251
Growing crops and fertilizers 255
Manure contains, what 257
Potassium, kainit, wood ashes and lime 252, 253
Value of “check plats,” the 253, 254
Valuable elements 250
CHAPTER XXIX.—ROOT HOUSES AND VEGETABLE PITS 258-259
How to build one 258, 259
Uses, their 258
Varieties of pits 259
CHAPTER XXX.—SMALL FRUITS 260-266
Cultivation 262
Currants and gooseberries 264
How to grow them 264
Enemies and their remedy 264, 265
Grapes 265
How to grow them 265, 266
Growing new plants 263
Labor and yield 260
Marketing 262
Planting 261
Preparing the soil 261
Raspberries and blackberries 263
How to grow them 264
Strawberry patch, the 260
CHAPTER XXXI.—THE POULTRY RUN 267-279
Branches of the business 272
Care and feed 269
Central hatching 273
Cleanliness 269
Colony plan versus yarded 274, 275
Effort and profit 278
How to succeed 279
Importance of incubation 273
Incubator hatching 271
Indian Runner ducks 277
Intensive hen, the 267
Location of house 270
Modern hen-house, a 270-271
Outdoor brooding 271
Profitable poultry 268
Small companies 269
CHAPTER XXXII.—ORGANIZATION 280-291
Agricultural colleges and books 281
New methods 280
Work of the months 282-291
CHAPTER XXXIII.—A FEW PRACTICAL “DON’TS” 292-298
Deep plowing 292
Department of Agriculture 294
Farmer’s life, the 292
Feed the soil 295
Making seeds comfortable 292, 293
Successful farmers 296, 297
Tools and their care 295
APPENDIX I. 299-300
Island of Guernsey products 299
APPENDIX II. 301-306
French Gardening, etc. 301
APPENDIX III. 307-317
Maylands Gardening Customs 307
APPENDIX IV. 318-321
Agricultural Courses 318
PREFACE.
An intensive farm is only an enlarged garden patch.
This book is not intended as a scientific book on agriculture; there
are many such books which are out of the depths of everyone except
professors and professionals. In a nice experiment station, nice
experiments and scientific calculations are excellent; but I want to
give the plain man or woman who has a back yard or back lot, out of
which he might make part of a living or more than a living, a book that
will show how to do it.
I want to help the man or woman who has to do the cultivation at odd
times and who finds it hard to get the time for the work, even though
this work enables him to do far more work of other kinds. I have had
all sorts of experience with gardening, in spite of telegrams and
people who want “just five minutes for some important business.” So if
you have the same trouble getting the time, do not let that discourage
you. We can get health, happiness and some profit in spite of the
interruptions.
It won’t be enough simply to read this book; that won’t make you a
gardener; but if you study it while you are working on the land and
use your judgment and common sense, in one season you will be able to
teach most of those whom you now have to hire as expert Gardeners at
Three Dollars a Day.
If anybody sneers at your gardening as being “book farming,” let him
sneer; a fool never understands what a wise man is doing: if he did,
he would do it himself. You have here the plain, simple, practical
facts without scientific terms—just the ordinary garden talk. There
are plenty of things you will not find in this book. You won’t find
analyses of fertilizers, nor how to grow “pomatoes,” or anything else
that won’t sell when you have grown it. Nor will you find fairy stories
of poultry profits that make the goose’s golden eggs look like thirty
cents. There is a use for all that sort of thing—it arouses interest
and stimulates the imagination. But you will probably be content to
be a good, practical, every-day gardener who can make things grow and
knows what to do with them after they have grown.
Some critics, who will not read this book, will sagely remark that such
books as Mr. Hall’s are dangerous, because they induce inexperienced
persons to sell out and lose their money trying to get Liberty on Three
Acres or a Living from a Little Land. To repeat for such people my
cautions and advice to learn navigation before buying your ship, is to
blow against the North wind.
If you have skipped the foregoing, just skip again, back to it. You
will see that I have promised to use no scientific terms. This book
will be read by more plain people than by scientists, and so I have
aimed to talk just as I would if I were trying to teach you how to
raise lettuce—or rather trying to teach you to learn for yourself how
to raise lettuce. For we cannot teach anyone anything, we can only give
him the opportunity of learning. So if the experimental agriculturist
thinks that a good deal has been left out that might have been put in,
I hope he will remember that I have had to pick from a measureless
field, and by trying to crowd in too much I might easily confuse the
less experienced and make it hard for him to learn.
And yet no one need think that by reading a book or any number of books
he can be made a gardener. That is done by work of head and hands on
the soil; and the best preparation for a really scientific use of your
own land, is to hire yourself out for a while to a market gardener and
get the practical, every-day experience.
You might as well expect to learn writing without using a pen as
gardening without using a bit of land. You will make some mistakes and
lose some crops, but I can show you how to profit by mistakes and to
lose very little by losses.
If you don’t understand the directions, that is my fault: I should be
able to make it clear to everyone. So just write me (a pencil and a
postal card will do) and I will tell you what you want to know, if I
know it myself or can find out.
BOLTON HALL.
56 PINE ST., NEW YORK CITY.
INTRODUCTION.
A farm is the only proper home. Working for yourself is the only true
independence. Labor on the land in the open gives health and long life.
Raise a living and sell the surplus. Work all the time, but don’t
overwork. Make faces at the cynic who says the farmer and his wife and
children work fifteen hours a day and then starve. It isn’t so. Work
alone is not farming; you must manage. Farming needs intelligence and
care, nothing more so. Everywhere you see good farm-homes and poor
ones; the difference is in the farmer. What the good farmers do, all
can do.
In this book, the author tells how to lay out the land, how to prepare
and plant and harvest, and how to make life joyous. He has boiled down
the experience of himself and his friends and the information contained
in bulletins and books and catalogs. A cobbler or clerk or typo, can
take this book and with his tennis-made muscle and his trade accuracy
can make a bare living the first year, a good living the second, and
start a bank account the third. I know it because I helped do it in my
youth and I have seen it done all my life.
One of the obstacles in the way of town families going to the country
is separation from friends and going among strangers. Another is the
conscious ignorance of the work and a sense of helplessness. These are
real and valid difficulties. They are equivalent to the difficulties
besetting a German or Norwegian farmer coming alone into an American
community in a new state. The hundreds of thousands of European farmers
who came to the states every year from the forties to the end of the
eighties overcame this difficulty by organizing colonies of friends and
neighbors and settling in one spot. They thus had society and they had
the benefit of their best leaders. Then their old friends kept coming
in smaller squads. This is the way for town people to do. Find six
or ten or a dozen and go together. Even if all are not relatives or
friends they may be of the same class or trade.
To any such colony I will furnish the money to pay for all the land
they need and let them begin paying the cost price of it at the end
of five years and finish in ten, with 4 per cent. interest. They may
pick the tract and bargain for the price. Upon their showing that the
agreed number are ready to go and are able to make the improvements and
provide the working equipment, I will advance the money to pay for the
land. They can divide it up to suit themselves.
I have furnished farms already plowed, fenced and housed, and horse
and cow free of charge. But these empty-handed folk, who have saved
nothing out of their former occupation, lack the qualities to manage
for themselves and to succeed at farming. They are too helpless and
dependent. Their best plan is to hire out in the country until they
learn farm work and life, then rent a piece of land, and then buy.
How much land shall each one have, how much can he properly cultivate?
That depends on what he raises, and this governs his location and the
price of the land. With present methods, he will need 20 acres if
he keeps a dairy of ten cows; or, 10 acres if he raises vegetables,
small fruit, poultry and milk; or, four acres is enough for truck
and a horse and cow, while one acre is enough if he raises only
celery, asparagus or tomatoes. The price of land is influenced by
social conditions, speculation, proximity to and quality of market
and agricultural adaptability, all the way from $5.00 an acre to
$250.00. There is plenty of it not above the value of the public and
private improvements. It is useless to buy a farm of 160 acres for
one family. They cannot work it, it is a dead expense, they would be
lonesome, would starve and quit. But a colony, settling as neighbors
on well-chosen land for which they pay only when they have had time to
earn it, will have every opportunity to succeed.
Only in rare cases would I advise town dwellers to go singly to
the country; they are disqualified by their social and industrial
habits. A colony of friends or Co-operative Associations overcome the
difficulties and do in fact assure success to any one possessed of
industry and frugality.
By intensive cultivation is meant, not any particular kind of product,
but farming the land thoroughly, getting the best yield and the best
quality out of every acre, the best seeds and the best breeds and the
best way of disposing of the crop when you get it. The farm or garden
may be in the vegetable or small fruit or corn and hay or dairying
section. In either case, you can cultivate it intensively, which is
thoroughly.
The book will tell you in A, B, C style how to farm. I am asked to tell
what to do with the crop after you have raised it, how to buy what you
don’t raise, and how to make social substitutes for the city crowds and
sights.
_Associate!_ _Co-operate!_
You may not know it, but the world is turning from private trade to
co-operation at a fast rate. In some countries most of the farmers do
all their business by co-operation.
Co-operation is simple and sure and safe, when enough people want it
and are shown how.
I have practiced co-operation in my business for twenty-three years.
I have been intimate with it the world over for twenty-five years. I
have seen it grow and grow until it numbers its millions of workers in
some countries, and is doubling every five years in many countries and
states. Though I am a manufacturer, my chief occupation is to preach
and teach co-operation to farmers—at my own expense.
Co-operative creameries have changed Minnesota from a declining wheat
state to a rich dairy state. Co-operation has saved the California
orange grower from bankruptcy and made him prosperous; it has raised
Denmark’s exports of butter, eggs and bacon from eighteen to eighty
millions a year, and it has almost cut off our supply of policemen
and politicians from Ireland, because over a thousand co-operative
associations have grown up there in twenty years.
After you have undertaken what this book tells you all about, you want
to count on forming co-operative associations with your neighbors to
do all the business that you have. You raise your own crop; but pack
it, ship it and sell it through your association. You use bought goods,
but buy them all through the association. That gives you a saving
in expenses, a saving in price, and a better quality. What is still
more, it makes better neighbors of you, and rids you entirely of the
demoralizing tricks of the trade, and prevents you figuring how to get
the best trade out of the other fellow. You are yourself “the other
fellow.” In the co-operative way, your interest lies in producing the
best stuff, which will gradually improve your motives. Co-operation
fits any sort of business, if there is enough of it.
One hundred and fifty cows are needed to start a cheese factory, 250
for a milk shipping association, 500 for a butter creamery; fewer than
these do not pay.
For co-operation in raising vegetables and small fruits, no fixed
quantity of product is required; two or more persons working together
is better than each for himself.
Talk it up as neighbors and then hold a meeting. Let all who want to
join, sign an agreement to deliver all their truck to the association
and pay a membership fee of $5.00 or over. Each member should have
an equal voice regardless of his acreage. Organize, either as a
corporation or a limited partnership. Elect the best qualified men to
be officers, and then give them unqualified support. Select a manager
and see to the marketing arrangements. If the quantity raised is large
enough, it is best to have your own receiving and selling agent in
the principal market. Every member must make a legal contract with
the association to submit to its rules about condition, packing and
delivering, to apply to his entire crop. Good quality, reliable packing
and regular supply are essential to good prices.
The manager or inspector must have full authority. Each member’s
delivery is graded, weighed, measured or counted and accurately
recorded. Once a month the account from each grade is made up, and the
proceeds, after paying expenses, are paid over.
The manager should be an experienced trucker, competent to instruct and
advise about the work of planting, growing and gathering. The growers
meet each other at the station, and compare notes. They all learn what
is known by the most expert among them. They can arrange to have one
man gather up the crops from several places and make one load to the
packing-house, taking turn about in this service. Small or poor growers
may be admitted with a nominal payment, even as low as 25 cents, the
remainder to be paid by a 5 per cent. deduction from his proceeds.
The association and management can also fill the assembled orders of
members for fertilizer, seed, implements and packing material, at
wholesale prices. In time you will make your own boxes, erect a cannery
for the surplus and even buy your own groceries co-operatively.
You can form a credit society with unlimited liability, to receive
on deposit the members’ surplus and borrow from the city. That money
is lent, for productive uses only, to members of known ability and
honesty, who give two similar members as security.
When you get safely started in one kind of co-operative association,
you will easily go to the next, as the Danes and the Irish have done.
ST. LOUIS, MO.
N. O. NELSON.
CHAPTER I.
THE GARDEN YARD
No man knows, nor can know, the capacity of a yard of earth, for it is
unlimited, just as the speed of the engine is unlimited. Just as with
the engine, the only question is whether it would pay to make it do any
more—it may cost too much. Where land is cheap, labor is high; there
intelligent cultivation will pay, but intensive cultivation will not.
That is the place where the field crops should be raised.
But the garden crops should be raised right round the towns and cities
and it is foolish to get to a distance from them. Stay right where you
are and get the piece of land that is best for your purpose; buy it, if
you can without paying too much for it; if not, rent it for as long a
term as you can; or get permission to use the bit of land, the vacant
lots—there are plenty even in the most crowded cities—and raise your
truck and your income on those lots. Without separating yourself from
your acquaintances or exiling your wife and children, learn to get your
living out of the earth.
Suppose that a man owns his house, even if it be but a bit of a
bungalow, and suppose he has a little bit of land on which he can
raise the most of what the family eats; he may have to work hard,
especially if his family cannot help in the work, but at least he is
independent; at least panics, lock-outs, change of circumstances or
even loss of health will not reduce him to starvation.
If you have a farm, Intensive Cultivation should interest you all the
more. Every farm is full of opportunities to make good money; but you
must not make the usual mistake of half working a big piece of land;
that means that you will always be overworked, always have a lot of
things that you know ought to be done, but cannot find time to do;
always have common grade crops that bring common prices. Everyone that
is overworked is underpaid, for he cannot do his best work.
Use the big fields for pasture, or for raising fine horses, or for pigs
or Angora goats or even for sheep; you had better let the fields run
wild rather than half cultivate them.
Keep accounts and watch your chance to sell all the land that does not
pay well. It may be that you are missing a fortune in the old neglected
orchard, or in the chestnut or hickory grove. The black walnuts or
butternuts, that are usually left for the neighbors’ boys, may be the
most profitable part of the farm.
The wood-lot may have possibilities for barrel hoops, which may be sold
to the improvement of the timber. It may need only thinning to bring
you a steady income while it increases in value.
Fine apples grafted on the old trees that now bear only cider apples,
if properly sprayed and thinned so as to give first-class fruit, may
sell for more than all the corn you can raise.[1]
The “pesky briers” that the farmer struggles with year by year,
may be the raspberries and blackberries that will sell readily for
good prices, when they are cultivated, to the summer residents or
boarding-houses. Your exposure and soil may be just the place for the
fine strawberries with which, when nicely separated from the second and
third grades, no market is ever overstocked.
But if you are always behind with the work and always short of cash or
worried to pull through, you have no time to think of these things and
no means to hire labor nor to develop them.
That pond may be needed, if it were cleared out, for a profitable
ice supply, furnishing paying work in the winter. The stream may be
a valuable water-power or at least may bring a high-priced crop
of water-cress; or it may be the very water needed, when properly
distributed, to make yours the most fertile land in the county. The
bit of swamp land, that raises nothing but mosquitoes, may need only a
few dollars’ worth of cranberry sets to be the best paying acre in the
country side.
There may be a veritable gold mine in a neglected quarry, or brick-clay
pit, or kaolin clay deposit, or in a sand bank, or a vein of marl.
Possibly you could rent the farm house or let camping sites for the
summer to people who would pay city prices for much of your stuff; so
that you could afford to keep help enough to leave only the easy work
of superintendence for you. Brains save more work than machines.
If you are raising the same crops that your neighbors do, harvesting at
the same time, and getting the same prices that everyone else does, you
may be sure that you are neglecting your chances.
The money is in finding things to raise that will sell, and that do not
have to compete with all the others.
Says the _Farm Journal_: “Farmers need more time to plan their work
and look after the business and economic end of their calling. The
employer who makes a full hand in barn and field from 5 A. M. till 8 P.
M., has no other time to devote to the real business of the farm than
the hours in which Nature imperatively calls upon him to rest, and a
man with aching muscles and tired limbs is not in condition to think
clearly or plan intelligently. It is poor economy for a farmer to take
the place of a dollar-a-day man in the field, when in so doing he has
left no leisure in which to work out the details of his operations.”
Think—think—it is true that we ourselves must work with the men if we
are to get the best work out of them; there is a big difference between
saying “Go, do that,” and “Come and let us do this.” But it is not
enough to work; any jackass can do that.
You know the old fable: “A farmer got his wheels stuck fast in a miry
road. The man knelt down in the mud crying to Hercules to come and help
him. Said Hercules, “Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel, I help
only those who help themselves!”
(There is a new part to that fable)—Now the mire was very deep and even
Hercules’ help was not enough; so he called on Pallas, the Goddess of
Wisdom. Said she, “Put this lever under the wheel.” Then the wagon was
easily lifted out.
Since then, some one else suggested using wide tires, so that the
wheels would not sink at all, and another invented a split-log
road-drag to keep the roads hard. But we are still waiting for the
farmers to learn to use them.
Maybe the roses in the bit of garden would bring you bigger money, if
they were made to bloom at the right time, than the potatoes that take
twice as much outlay and ten times as much work.
Pick out as much land as you can attend to without walking your legs
off, and raise on it the best crops that bring the best prices and let
the rest take care of itself.
The market is more important than the crop. Consult the editors of your
agricultural papers about where to sell. Require bank reference from
any commission merchant that you do not know, and write to the bank for
its report on him before you ship to him. Make his acquaintance, if
possible, and talk to him about what he can sell the best; naturally,
he will take more interest in the affairs of a man that he knows than
in a stranger. Don’t go to town or to the boat or railroad with half a
load or with a load of poor stuff. Arrange with your neighbors to take
enough for them to make your trip pay.
If a trolley or a carrier can be brought into use to make regular
shipments, see some merchant or hotel man and arrange to supply him
constantly. Then lay out your plantings so as to have a constant supply
of what he needs.
If you are choosing a farm or have a chance to sell yours, inquire
and look to see if you can find one near a good market where you
will earn your own commissions. The way to find out what you want is
to talk about it to everyone you meet. A good local map will help
you, but of course the real estate agents know more about what is
for sale and the prices and values than you could learn in a year’s
travel. No men, except editors and hotel clerks, are so ready to give
information as the real estate agents. Remember, however, than even
when they are honest (most of them are, like the rest of us, as honest
as circumstances allow), the successful real estate agent must see the
rosy side of the peach and may not point out the worm-hole on the other
side. You will have to look for that yourself.
When you have found what you want, point out that you are buying to
improve, so that the security will be better every day, and fight for
easy terms and for a long mortgage. You can get the privilege to pay
off any time that you cannot use the capital to better advantage.
Let some good lawyer examine the records and see that the papers are
all straight, and guarantee the title. If there is a local title
insurance company its policy is worth all it costs, and will help you
greatly should you want to sell or to raise another mortgage.
Buy your land—don’t rent it; it does not pay to put your work into
another man’s land.
Every improvement in the condition of the earth—agricultural,
mechanical, ethical, educational, political or even religious must
go eventually and mainly to the benefit of the owners of the earth;
therefore get hold of a bit of the earth, so that everyone who does
good will do that good for you.
Get a small bit of land near the market rather than a big bit away from
it, because the more people there are near you the better you can live
and the more money you can make. Besides it is much pleasanter and
better for the wife and children, as well as for yourself, to be near
schools, libraries, proper company, stores, than to be away out among
stumps. A growing town will make you rich when it grows out your way,
because you are in the way and when the land is wanted you must be paid
to get out. Meanwhile, you can get manure and help much easier and
cheaper than if you were at a distance.
Don’t put your labor or your money into expensive buildings: they only
invite the tax assessor; but get proper buildings—they may be only
shacks, but they should be well planned shacks, for you must have room
enough to shelter your tools, wagons and farm machines, to house your
stock, to store your crops, to sprout your seeds, to save your manure
and to do indoor work during bad weather.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] There is only one good way to do this: cut back all the old wood
and work out a new top on which to graft the fine apple scions.
CHAPTER II.
THE SOIL.
If this book is to be of real service, we must be clear about the terms
and expressions, so that, though you may know nothing about gardening
when you begin to read it, you may know enough to earn a living from
the soil when you finish it—and practice a little.
Many talk glibly enough about the soil, though few could tell exactly
what it means. But market-gardeners must understand it, if they are
to live by it. So it will be well to begin with the soil itself. Soil
is that thin layer of earth that covers our globe like a blanket, and
in which all that plants, beasts and men live upon, grows. If it were
washed off, starvation would follow. The scientific explanation of
the origin of this blanket, is, that it was formed by the action of
heat, cold, water, frost, ice, low forms of vegetable life and tiny
animals; sometimes working singly and sometimes all together. It is now
established that the most of the face of the earth was once rock which
was rubbed, crushed and ground by these forces until this surface layer
was made. Then higher forms of life became possible. Not centuries
only, but aeons of time, were necessary to accomplish this. Layer upon
layer of finely crushed particles were exposed to the action of the air
which completed the work the grinding of Nature’s forces had begun.
To follow out the story of the development of the soil is a most
fascinating study, and if you have time from your other interests, you
will be glad that you took it up; for though you may be a good farmer
without this knowledge, you will be a better one with it, because you
will be more intelligent and sympathetic. The soil-blanket holds within
its warm folds all that is necessary for life, and the wonder of it all
increases the more we learn about the millions of years and numberless
forces employed to bring it to this state of perfection. If Nature has
not wearied in her great work, there is poor excuse for the gardener to
shirk or neglect the labor necessary to get the best possible results
from any given piece of soil.
Nobody yet knows what are the best possible results from any given
piece of soil; for since new discoveries are being made every year, we
can show only what has so far been done with the best knowledge and
skill at our disposal. One man in Pennsylvania is selling his soil; not
his crop, at $1.50 per bushel to inoculate other ground.
The fine, fertile layer of earth that is called soil does not go
very deep. It covers another layer which is harder, coarser, colder
than itself, and this second layer is known as the subsoil, or that
soil which is under the surface layer. In all temperate climes the
difference is strongly marked, but in rainless, sun-dried regions
there is often no difference to be noted. The intelligent farmer or
gardener has the opportunity to decide just how much of that subsoil
he will convert into surface soil, and the means of doing this will be
disclosed later under the head of “Tillage.” The more of it he brings
into use the greater his own profit, so that it pays to know how. In
the early days of farming no effort was made to bring the subsoil into
use, and consequently the returns from agriculture were small. Now we
know better than that, and we also know how to get more out of the
soil, whether surface or subsoil.
No soil, no garden; so the new gardener must get acquainted with the
ground he intends to cultivate. It is not to be denied that soil which
is in good tilth will be a great help to the beginner, but that is only
to be had in well-cultivated gardens, which usually bring a good price
when found in the market. Besides, with proper care and attention, any
well situated soil can be made to yield good returns, and the gardener
who is not disposed to give proper care and attention will find nothing
in this book, or in any other, that will teach him how to succeed. The
German idea is that a good soil is merely a place to put fertilizers
(and German ideas on gardening are not to be despised). This is simply
another way of repeating that, with brains and work any soil can be
made to yield good returns. It is not safe, however, to trust to the
“Light of Nature” as to what “proper care and attention” is, so here
are the details.
If you are already settled and are planning to use your back yard for a
garden, you will have to take the soil as it is, and by your own effort
make it what it should be. There is no cause for despair no matter what
it may be. A back yard that was trodden almost as compact as asphalt,
and whose clods when dug had to be broken up with an axe, was made to
yield a large variety of flowers the first season it was planted. So go
ahead and do what you can with what you have. But, if you are hunting
for a garden plot, bear in mind the importance of soil texture. You may
thereby save yourself both time and labor.
The first thing is to examine the soil to determine whether it is
sandy or clayey, dry or moist, light or heavy, well drained or wet;
whether it is warm and live, or cold and dead. You will then learn what
sort of cultivation is best for your particular plot of ground.
Because in your neighbor’s garden a certain treatment has been
successful, is not saying that it will give the same results in yours,
unless all the conditions are the same. For instance, his light, sandy
loam needs little cultivation, and your soil may be hard and clayey. In
that case you would have to make up the difference by careful work.
There are “gardeners” who think it is sufficient barely to break up the
ground, add a little manure or other fertilizer, and scatter seeds.
That they get any sort of results only shows how willing Nature is to
give a return on the slightest labor. But Nature is wise as well as
willing, and therefore gives lavishly to him only, who, by intelligent
labor, deserves the best returns.
Therefore, learn the needs of your soil and supply them, and you will
have no cause to complain of the niggardliness of Mother Nature to
those of her children who feed at her bosom.
Plants often die for lack of moisture in the soil, and this condition
cannot be satisfactorily remedied by the watering-can. The trouble
lies back of such surface treatment and can only be cured by getting at
the cause. The soil should be so prepared by tillage that it will catch
and hold enough water to supply the plants with the moisture they need
even through hot, dry spells. Plants draw their nourishment through
their roots to their stems and leaves, and you need only examine the
fine roots and rootlets of any plant to realize for yourself that
such nourishment could not be taken in in a solid form. Plants are
constantly drawing this moisture from the soil and as constantly giving
it off into the air through their leaves. If you will watch any plant
during a drought, you will see the leaves begin to shrivel before the
stems or branches show signs of suffering. This is Nature’s effort to
sustain the life of the plant as long as possible. The shrivelling of
the leaves prevents the escape of the little moisture the plant can
draw, and retains it longer within the plant’s system.
Deep plowing, the breaking up of the subsoil, the addition of decaying
vegetable matter or humus, fertilizing with stable manure, and the
raising of crops that can be frequently tilled, all help to add
moisture to the soil. If you do these and the dry spell does strike
you hard, so that it seems necessary to bring water, the soil will
suck it and hold it, instead of letting it pass off quickly through
the action of sun and air. Frequent stirring of the surface soil,
to the depth of one inch, will make a little dry layer or top-coat
through which the moisture does not readily escape. This is what is
called a “mulch.” A mulch may also be an added coat of leaf-mould
or stable-litter or any little dry covering which will prevent the
moisture from escaping.
For early crops a light, sandy loam is best. A sandy loam is a loose,
sandy soil made productive by good tillage, by mixing in humus and
plant food or fertilizer. But when you haven’t the best, it is for you
to counterfeit it as nearly as possible. The advantages of sandy loam
are that it is early, easy to work, responds quickly to fertilizers and
is readily kept in good tilth.
“Tilth” is really the planting condition of the soil, and good tilth
means the best possible conditions for planting seeds; where the plow
and the harrow have done their work; where the sun has warmed and the
rain moistened; where the fertilizer has sweetened and quickened; where
stones and weeds are unknown, so that the new life finds the best
conditions for sprouting and developing. You will understand why such
soil is not often in the market. It is Nature’s materials plus man’s
intelligent labor; and he who has it, is usually found working it to
his own profit.
Some soils are easily put into condition: others require much time and
labor, but all always repay. It is well, however, to avoid a hard,
cold, clayey soil if possible; it takes so long to warm up, that the
seeds make little progress. Of course, steady persistent effort will
greatly improve even this soil, and if that is the sort you have, you
must do your best with it, but the average gardener cannot afford to
wait.
Compared with agriculture, which has been known in some form ever
since there have been any records, tillage is very new. Like many
another important thing, it was discovered quite accidentally by an
English farmer, named Jethro Tull. He found that by stirring up the
soil about his plants, he got better returns; and gave his discovery
to the world. But he could not explain why it was so; he merely knew
the fact itself. Science has since discovered that it is due to the
action of the air in helping to break up the many compounds found in
the earth containing plant food. It was a simple thing, yet it has
really revolutionized gardening. Before tillage was known the returns
from the sort of cultivation in use were very scanty, and this book had
never been written had Tull’s discovery never been made. So you may be
able to do the world a great favor if you cultivate intelligently, not
fearing to experiment or to make known the results of your experiments.
It may be reserved for you, in your little garden patch, to discover
some new truth that will prove a blessing to the whole world, for no
science today offers so wide a field for discovery as the science of
Agriculture, nor so sure a return for labor expended.
There is a story that illustrates the value of tillage. A man lay
dying and as his four sons gathered about his bed he whispered feebly,
“My sons, there is a great treasure hidden in the garden.” Scarcely
had they laid the body of their father away, when the sons went to
the garden and began digging it up. They dug every inch carefully,
and found nothing for their pains. Then the eldest son, being of a
practical turn of mind, suggested to his brothers that they plant the
garden and thus secure some return for their labor. This they did,
and when harvest-time came the returns were so wonderfully increased
that they said, “Now we know what our father meant. Let us seek like
treasure in all our fields.” And in every garden and field lies hidden
the same treasure that can be revealed only by the expenditure of
intelligent labor.
Tillage is an art in itself, and very important to success. There are
two kinds—the tillage of preparation and the tillage of maintenance.
They are widely different in their purpose and effect. The average
farmer thinks that both may be carried on at the same time, and this
belief may be in part the cause of his failures.
The tillage of preparation includes not merely the breaking up of
the soil by the plow, but pulverizing it for as great a depth as the
roots of the plants will reach. How deep that may be, depends upon the
character of the soil and of the crops. For example, a hard soil with a
subsoil near the surface, must be plowed deep; so that the root crops,
which run deep, may find sustenance. On the other hand, sandy soil, or
one which leaches away, can stand only shallow plowing, as we must hold
the subsoil firm to prevent leaching. So that, even in the tillage of
preparation it comes back to the same point, to learn the needs of your
particular soil and supply them.
The tillage of maintenance should be given as often as once a week or
ten days, and is merely that surface loosening which enables the soil
to drink in the rain and withstand the heat of the sun. The loosened
surface will not cake about the plants, and it makes a layer of mulch
for the protection of the under soil.
By the addition of humus, or vegetable matter, a clayey soil may
be put in condition so that it will respond to further tillage
as satisfactorily as the lighter, sandy loam. This is the way to
“counterfeit the best soil.”
Humus is added by plowing into the land vegetable matter which is in
condition to rot quickly and become thoroughly mixed with the soil.
Rye, clover, cornstalks, vines or other garden waste, and manure, are
commonly used. Manure that contains a large proportion of stable litter
and sweepings, and street sweepings, are especially rich in humus, and
are much sought after by experienced gardeners. By adding them, the
texture of the soil is lightened and improved, made loose and mellow
so as to hold moisture, and is at the same time prevented from caking.
Moreover, humus contains plant food and heat that make seed sprouting
easy.
The amateur gardener seldom recognizes the importance of the physical
texture of the soil, but the best results demand the best conditions.
Unless you want to grow pears and plums—which thrive in clayey
soil—break up the clayey earth and improve its texture in every way.
Your garden will repay you, and you won’t go about denouncing those who
have written books about the possibilities of small areas as wilful
deceivers of the guileless and unwary. Get it firmly fixed in your mind
to start with, that, if your garden does not yield adequate returns
upon your labor, the fault is yours. You are working unintelligently,
and deserve no more than you are getting. To know your soil is to be
able to give it the treatment it needs to make it fruitful.
CHAPTER III.
SOIL FERTILITY.
Soil fertility is the power in the soil itself to produce a good crop
under proper conditions. Man can neither make nor destroy the land.
All that man can do is to make it more or less efficient, according to
how he uses it. Two men may take two pieces of soil of equal fertility
and get vastly different results; by careful study and experiment we
may learn how to take advantage of this fertility; but the real secret
of it, Nature has wisely locked up in the soil itself, so that one
generation of men cannot really rob the next. It has been said that
old-time farmers, of New England particularly, robbed the soil of its
fertility, so that their sons have been compelled to abandon the old
farms and seek new land in the west, or new occupations in the cities
of the country. The real truth is, not that the soil has been robbed
of its fertility by the fathers, but that the sons have continued the
unenlightened methods of the fathers even after their ineffectualness
has been proved.
Since that land was abandoned it has not really been idle. Nature has
been improving it all these years by placing leaves and trees back
upon it, thus providing humus; and also by the action of heat and
cold. Some of this land, overgrown with briers and brush, has been
cleared and found to be better and stronger than ever before. Much of
the soil is sour, but that is easily remedied, and wherever a patch
is burned over, the grass works in well. On some of these abandoned
farms there is an excellent opportunity to combine intensive culture on
the lowlands with orcharding on the hills, for the fertility is still
there. If man could destroy this quality, that clings to all soil, he
would have spoiled it centuries ago, and the race would have starved.
But we are a long time learning how best to use it.
Robert S. Seeds, of Birmingham, Pa., thinks he has solved the secret
of unlocking that soil fertility, and he offers the astounding results
of his operations on an abandoned farm, as proof of his claims. He not
only raises enormous crops, but he sells his soil by the bushel, to his
less enlightened neighbors to inoculate their farms. He tells the story
of his experiments in a lecture called “How God made the Soil Fertile,”
which is published in pamphlet form and sells for 25 cents.
He says “The Lord made all the acres of the land fertile, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and gave it to man to live upon, to prosper
and be happy. In doing so He never hauled a wagon-load of manure or a
load of lime, nor bought a ton of fertilizer—and how did He do it? He
did it with vegetable matter; and I thought if the Lord could do it, I
could do it. This sounds a little conceity, but I mean it.”
As a result of this belief, Mr. Seeds took to experimenting, beginning
with the crops that store nitrogen in their roots, such as crimson
clover, and with purple-top strap-leaf turnip. But the results were
not sufficiently great to please this man, who was after all there was
in the soil. He needed some plant with longer roots, and finally hit
upon the cowhorn turnip, which will grow roots from 9 inches to 2 feet
long, thus making available the plant food locked up in the subsoil.
Finally he combined cowhorn turnip and rape, and now his soil is the
most fertile in his district, and is so profitable as an inoculator of
other soils that he keeps fields free from harvest crops so as to have
the soil for sale.
“Bob Seeds” further says that a field filled with the decayed vegetable
matter and humus from one crop of crimson clover plowed down, will
hold fifty tons more water to the acre than soil that is not. If you
figure how much water you must have to raise a crop of corn, oats,
potatoes, hay, etc., you will see the value of land that has the power
to hold water. There was a farmer in Pennsylvania who got his farm in
such a water preserving condition that he said the spring rains were
a nuisance. Watch the soil and you will see, that soil that is filled
with decayed vegetable matter and humus is warmer in the winter-time,
cooler in the summer-time, wetter in dry weather and dryer in wet
weather.
A mulch which preserves the moisture in hot or cold weather also
unlocks this fertility of the soil.
All of this is of immense importance, not only to the farmer on a large
scale, but also to you, with the limited area of your garden yard;
for in it lies the secret of heavier and earlier crops than your less
instructed neighbors. Professor Whitney, Chief of the Bureau of Soils,
Department of Agriculture, Wash., says that deep plowing and shallow
cultivation are the best means of retaining moisture in the soil,
and he adds, “Strange as it may seem, while we suffer if we do not
get rains, we should actually be better off, as they are in the arid
regions of the west, if we did not have any rain during the growing
season and had a means of providing water when we wanted it. The
trouble with us is that we cannot maintain the dry mulch, because we
have rain on the average every three days. If you knew what was coming,
you could save your crop through any ordinary period of drought,
provided you had the skill, the judgment and the chance which would
lead you to begin your operations at just the right time.”
According to Professor Whitney there are about 400 distinct types of
soil so far encountered in the United States, with varying degrees of
known fertility, and only eight or ten staple crops growing. This,
of course, does not include the special crops like celery; it is the
regular, staple field or garden crops that are unnecessarily limited.
These are grown on all kinds of soil in all parts of the country
without regard to the suitability of the soil to the crop.
The Government, through the Department of Agriculture, has given a
great impetus to plant introduction, and you cannot of course expect to
rival or approach it, with its enormous funds and staff of experts, but
you can experiment with the new crops it introduces. Hitherto, in this
country, where the soil was too dry for corn or wheat, or too moist for
potatoes, it has been neglected altogether; but the present movement
includes finding crops suitable for these lands. The Government has
introduced the durum wheat which yields crops in regions suffering
from drought, and in 1905 the United States exported 6,000,000 bushels
of it; Japanese Kiushu rice is doing well in Louisiana and Texas rice
fields; the Japanese salad plant, the udo, is being tested from Maine
to California and giving good results; Kafir corns from Abyssinia,
India and East Africa are being grown in Kansas and other western
sections; while the English broad bean, Hungarian paprika, and fruits
from all parts of the world, are being tested in all sections of this
country. Those 400 different types of soil should mean limitless
diversifications of crops, and it is fair to assume that the real day
of agriculture, in this country at least, is only just dawning.
The Government is now testing profitable crops for the farms of New
England which have been abandoned to the mortgagees. Areas there are
too small to grow corn[2] and wheat in successful competition with the
great farms of the west, but there are other crops which will yield
even better results and command the market. You, who are now coming
into the great calling of earning your living from the soil, could
not have chosen a better moment for entrance. Keep in touch with the
Department of Agriculture. It is your department, a sort of college or
training school which you maintain, and anything you want to know the
Department will gladly try to tell you. If you want to know what is
best for you to plant on your patch, send a sample of your soil, tell
where your farm is located, what are your means and experience, and
the suggestions made will fit your particular case. If you send any of
your requests, whether for advice or for bulletins, addressed simply
to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., you will get a
reply, and will find out who is the head of the special department your
request was referred to. The Department is doing needed work, and by
corresponding with them and getting advice, you can give proof of your
interest.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] NOTE.—But corn growing is on the increase in New England and at the
great Omaha Corn Show a Connecticut farmer won three first prizes. The
Flint varieties are especially adapted for the New England climate and
soil and open up new possibilities for the New England farmer.
CHAPTER IV.
LOCATION.
How to buy land and why; how to help the poor to keep themselves on the
land and what plain people have actually done; the record yields and
how they have been raised; how much capital can be used by one man, are
considered in “A Little Land and a Living.”
How much of a crop you may be able to get; how much or rather how
little capital it takes; how much labor is needed; where cheap lands
are to be found and how to clear wild land and how to build, are all
treated fully in “Three Acres and Liberty,” now published in fine shape
at fifty cents. So this “hand book” need only show what other things
are included in the term “location.”
If you are thinking of the character of the soil when hunting for a
garden plot, you will more than ever think also about the importance of
location. Any soil, even the best sandy loam, needs some fertilizing
and watering, and you cannot afford to use land where manure can
not be had easily, or where there is not a good water supply. To
pay high for fertilizer cuts the profit from your small area, and
this is more especially true if your soil is clayey and needs much
preparation-tillage. In most cities you will find stable-keepers and
others who will give you manure or street sweepings in the winter in
return for hauling it away. That is a great advantage to you, but if
you locate your garden where truckage amounts to two or three dollars a
load, you have offset the advantage you derived from the free manure.
Also, if your water supply is poor, you will find it difficult to carry
your crops through the hot weather.
MARKET.
You can raise a good crop from good soil properly fertilized, but if
you cannot market it to advantage, you can’t sell it at a profit. A
long railway haul not only injures the garden truck, but it also eats
up the profits. Therefore, get your plot near a town or city where the
expense of selling is reduced to a minimum and where the demand for
garden products will at least equal the supply.
So the good-garden-plot tests are three: first, the character of the
soil, second, the location as regards the market, and third, the
demands of that market. He who must of necessity use the land where he
is, will, if he uses his brains as well as his hands, find his reward
satisfactory, even though it fall below the returns from a plot with
all advantages.
CHAPTER V.
SEEDS.
The expense and labor of preparing and tilling soil is too great to
allow you to plant poor seed. The stock-breeder does not take his
sickliest, poorest specimens for breeding purposes, but rather selects
the best and most nearly perfect specimens; you should be careful to
do the same with your plants. The farmer’s work is just as important
as the stock-breeder’s. It should be the aim of each to improve the
strain and produce the best possible result. Therefore, if you are
growing corn, plant seed only from the stalk that produced the most
and the best ears of corn. It is good to send fine ears to market and
get the best price for them, but if you save only your scrubby ears
for seed, next year you will not have fine, perfect ears of corn to
send. So select of your very best for seed purposes, and if your best
is not good enough, then buy from a better grower who has the best.
Aim to produce an ideal ear of corn. It can be done, and you might as
well do it. Only in this way will you find your corn crop paying you
for your time and labor. If you carefully follow this every year, you
will find your acre annually producing more and more corn without any
additional labor or expense. That is one trick in making farming pay.
It is a trick that holds good with every garden crop as well as with
corn. It won’t do to wait until harvest time to find out if the seed
you have planted is any good, if you have to buy your seed and want to
make a profit from your garden the first season. This simple method of
testing seeds may save you time and money. Get your seed early in the
season, select about one hundred and put them between two moist pieces
of flannel, which in turn are placed between two soup plates. Keep the
flannel moist (not soaking wet with water standing in the dishes), and
as soon as the seeds have sprouted, count the proportion of live ones.
If only a few of them have sprouted, you will know that you cannot
afford to give ground up to the use of such poor seed. The larger the
proportion of your test seeds that sprout, or “germinate,” as this
process is called, the better for your profit, if you plant from this
same stock or assortment.
Be sure you deal with a seed house that has a reputation at stake; and
if possible go there yourself and see the man who really knows about
seed: generally there is only about one man in a concern who does know
his business.
If you answer attractive advertisements and buy at “big bargains” you
may lose your money, or, what is worse, you may be kept waiting from
day to day till your planting days are over, or worst of all, you may
plant poor seed. The dates of planting given throughout this book are
for the latitude of New York. In Northern New England planting should
be about three weeks later. All the middle western states can be
figured the same as New York: but all states south of Pennsylvania may
be figured twelve days in advance for every one hundred miles southward.
This holds good for sowing out of doors or for transplanting out of
doors. For starting seeds in your home, these times will do for the
entire eastern states.
CHAPTER VI.
PLANT-BREEDING.
Plant-breeding is producing plants adapted to particular conditions or
requirements; but the mere production of something new or different, is
not true plant-breeding. The plant breeder has a definite purpose or
aim in mind, and this comes only from a clear idea of his business. The
professional breeders produce the races or groups, but the intelligent
individual farmer adapts them to his own conditions, and may make
modifications of inestimable value to other farmers.
Good farmers have always been plant-breeders, even though they did not
know it. They have always kept the best ear of corn and the best potato
for seed. They have followed the stock-breeder’s plan—only the best
stock for sires and dams. So no common plants should be used for seed;
only the finest is worth planting. Improvement is made by selection, as
Darwin taught us many years ago, but we are slow to learn new lessons.
We know that we do not look to the children of physically, mentally
or morally deformed persons for our specimens of physical, mental
and moral manhood; nor to the cur’s litter for the best type of pup.
Now we are learning that the same holds good with plants, and that
the farmer who keeps the small potatoes for seed will produce poorer
potatoes than he ought to have.
The other day I found a farmer harvesting a measly lot of corn. “Where
did you get that seed?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “I picked it up ’most
anywhere.” I could have told him that myself without asking.
Selection and breeding are not the work of experts alone, for any one
who gains the simple knowledge that enables him to recognize the plant
or crop that resists prevailing diseases and flourishes best under
his conditions, needs only to preserve the seed of such plants for
propagating. Cross-breeding, on the contrary, is expert work, but new
strains may be secured by straight selection of individual plants, and
this gives enormous results. If one persistently saves the seeds of
those plants that best serve his purpose, he will soon have crops that
are superior to any that he had before. The process is so simple that
anybody can do it. We have talked for years of the “survival of the
fittest,” and this is but helping the best to beat the poorer ones.
What causes the variations that make selection possible nobody yet
knows; but we do know that changes in soil, climate, methods of
growing and in other things have an effect. Some variations come from
“crossing,” and some from no cause that we can see: in those cases they
are called “sports” of nature; learn to look out for them and when the
new variety is better than anything you have before produced, save it
for seed and see what comes of it. You may thereby be doing all mankind
a service.
CHAPTER VII.
PLANT NEEDS.
Plants need water, air, food, light and warmth just as animals do, and
it is wonderful to study the shifts and contrivances to which they
resort to get these, and also to protect themselves against too much of
any of them. If the plant were not able to change itself to suit the
conditions, it would often die where now it fights successfully.
Nothing affects the plant like the water supply; the size of every part
of the plant is increased by plenty of water. It not only helps the
growth of flowers and fruits, but it even changes the character of the
plant. In a moist air, cactus will put out leaf-like organs, gorse will
grow leaves instead of thorns; while where the water supply is very
scanty, the potato will put forth no leaves, but will become like a
cactus.
Yet plants do not grow in soil that is too wet, because they need air,
and too much water suffocates the roots. By proper irrigation—which
means giving just the right supply of water—both the quantity and
quality of the crop can be improved.
While plants need light, all varieties do not need the same amount of
it. You will find that those which need much light can turn towards
it, and this of itself will show you where such plants should be sown.
Plants have various ways to resist the supply of light when they are
getting too much. They droop their heads or close their leaves, which
prevents evaporation.
Different plants need different food and the same soil conditions will
not suit all. Some require rich soil if they are to flourish, while
some do better in poor soil. On the whole, plants, like people, are
better for under-feeding than for over-feeding. In general, starving
a plant makes it flower and fruit more quickly, but less abundantly;
while over-feeding helps to make much stem and leaf instead of fruit,
and also produces monstrosities. Too much nitrogen, especially, makes
too much stem and leaf, though nitrogen is one of the most important
plant foods. (Bailey says too much nitrogen can be corrected to a
certain extent, by potassium put in the soil.[3])
We are sure of only three plant foods—potash, phosphoric acid, and
nitrogen. Then there are lime, stable manure, green manure, clover
and cowpeas to doctor the soil with, when it is suffering from
chemical ills. This gives some idea of the vast unexplored regions of
agriculture which afford you and every other worker in the soil an
opportunity to make some great discovery for the benefit of the world.
No other calling offers such limitless opportunities.
Lime is especially valuable for plant food and also to make other kinds
of plant food available. Crops often fail in soil where there is plenty
of plant food, because it is not in the form that the plants can use.
Lime hastens the decay of vegetable matter, sweetens sour soil, and
greatly improves the texture of clay soils. Besides this it counteracts
magnesium in the soil and destroys its bad effects. But lime may not be
applied carelessly, because, although some plants cannot live without
it, some require a very small quantity. (It is, therefore, wise to send
a sample of the soil, to write what we want to grow, to the nearest
Government experiment station, who will probably suggest what could be
done with it, to make it productive.)
The right degree of warmth is another plant necessity. The best
temperature for plants generally is 86° of the ordinary thermometer
(30° Centigrade). This, however, depends upon the plant. The “best
temperature” varies with the species and variety. Usually, if the soil
is hotter than that, growth stops, and if the greater heat is kept up,
the plant dies. When the temperature is lowered, growth ceases before
freezing point is reached. Some few plants may be frozen without injury
if they are allowed to thaw slowly, but most of them are easily killed
by the frost. Too great heat or too much cold acts the same as lack of
water; the heat causes too great evaporation, the cold prevents the
roots taking in the water.
Shingles stuck in the ground on the sunny side will serve to protect
young plants from sun and rain, while cool soil may be had by using
the shady places, or by sheltering the ground with flat sheds the roof
boards of which have open spaces between them as wide as the boards.
This is done in some southern tobacco fields.
It is the law of nature that living cells must have a constant supply
of oxygen, that is why a tar wash sometimes kills plants by cutting
off the air supply. In the same way, too wet soil or too hard a crust
smothers the roots and the plants die. The surface soil should be kept
loose and sufficiently dry, so that the air can circulate. If this be
prevented, the soil becomes hard and sour and unfit to feed plants.
It is of the greatest importance to keep the soil open and loose by
proper tillage, so as to make plants healthy and vigorous.
Though plants need air they should be protected from draughts and
sudden blasts of air, whether hot or cold. For this reason, the
intelligent gardener will consider the effect of wind upon his crops
and where necessary will plant windbreaks. If you look about you, you
cannot fail to see the ill effects of strong winds in the odd shapes
of forest trees; and in badly arranged gardens you will find the same
effects in the fruit trees and small fruit bushes and in the stunted
crops. Plants shape themselves to their surroundings, and the way they
shape themselves is determined by inherited qualities; so it may be
said that the success of the plant depends upon its surroundings and
upon the seed it came from.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] NOTE.—In regard to muck soils, it is not a case of excess of
nitrogen but lack of potash which makes potash valuable for such.
Samuel Fraser.
CHAPTER VIII.
CROP ROTATION.
In agriculture on a large scale the difficulty is how to arrange the
farm business so as to make it pay. It is only of late that we are
beginning to understand that agriculture is a business, and that to
make it pay one must apply business principles. The best farmer is not
necessarily the one who knows the most “Science,” but the one who is
able to fit his science, his facts and his business in together.
The market value of special crops is so high that the grower can afford
to provide the extra manure and other expensive materials to keep the
land in good condition. This is the chief reason for the use of great
quantities of stable manure in market-gardening, far greater quantities
than are needed for mere food of the crops. So if you find that you are
advised to use more manure on your small plot than some farmer you know
uses on his big field, do not feel that you are being imposed upon. He
could not afford to use so much and you cannot afford to use less. The
farmer on a large scale has to let part of his low priced land rest in
clover once in a while. You cannot afford to let any of your small
area rest, so you must make up to the land by giving it plant food
enough.
In these days machinery has made so many wonderful changes in the
management of crops that the farmer who sticks to the old farming
customs has no chance of making more than a living. When the country
was new, it was the practice to farm one section until it was
exhausted, and then to move to fresh soil. The farmer was saved the
bother of cultivating, as virgin soil needed practically only to be
planted to bring forth a good harvest. But conditions have changed
and the virgin soil left today is not important in the farming
possibilities. Therefore, we have had to look for other means of
getting crops and making every inch of land do its share. We no longer
allow land to lie fallow that it may rest and renew itself. We renew it
by fertilizing and by rotation of crops. Crop rotation is very valuable
because it is a saving of fertilizer and labor, and keeps the soil
in good condition. This has been proved by experiments made without
manure, depending entirely upon rotation for fertilizing, which gave
excellent results.
There are probably a dozen or more good reasons for the value of crop
rotation which have not yet been discovered and formulated, but the
following are well known:
Some crops tend to correct the faults of others. It has been proved
that the continuous growing of one crop injures the soil in some
respect, and the crop falls off both in quantity and quality. Rotation
tends to overcome this difficulty. Then, too, this rotation works out
and evens up the inequalities of the soil, partly through the different
treatment required by the different crops.
Different plants draw different portions of food from the soil and at
different times. By rotation these heavy drafts on the plant food do
not come at the same times, and the seasons get a chance to even up the
inequalities.
Different plant food gets mixed into the soil, so that the roots can
feed on it, by the decay of the parts left in the ground or which
are plowed under. But the greatest benefit comes from the nitrogen
compounds through growing plants, such as cowpeas, crimson clover,
etc.; these “leguminous” plants have little knots or tubers on their
roots with the mysterious power of gathering the free nitrogen out of
the soil or air, and turning it back again to the soil in condition to
be used by other plants. Now nitrogen is the hardest to keep and the
most expensive of all the plant foods that the farmer has to buy, and
to get this nitrogen is sometimes the only reason he has for buying
chemical fertilizers.
This shows the importance of leguminous crops to the farm. They supply
this nitrogen at almost no cost, or at a profit.
Some plants have more power than others to use the contents of the
subsoil, and may draw less on the upper soil, and further, by their
decay may add richness to the earth. Most legumes have this power to
take nourishment from the subsoil.
Well-planned rotation helps to maintain the supply of decayed stuff
in the soil, on which the plants feed. It also improves the soil’s
texture. Moreover, it not only lessens the necessity for much chemical
fertilizer, but it puts those fertilizers to better use. Where live
stock is kept, crops should be raised to feed the stock to make manure.
Rotation is, also, a plan for cleaning the soil. Different weeds and
insects grow after different crops and the succession or “rotation” as
we call it, prevents any kind getting a secure hold.
It enables the farmer to meet the demands of the market, by continuous
crops.
CHAPTER IX.
WEEDS.
It is not enough to know what to grow, you must also know what not to
grow for profit, in a garden patch; and first in this class come weeds.
Study them until you know even their seeds. You cannot expect to get
rid of weeds until you know the nature of them and the best way to
attack them, so that they may be readily destroyed. If you run across
any common ones that you cannot place, send sample to the Department of
Agriculture. They will tell you all about them. Get from the Department
Farmer’s Bulletin 28 on “Weeds and How to Kill Them.” All this will pay.
One of the most common of the weeds of the north is the pigweed. This
is the growth of one year and can be destroyed by simply preventing
it from running to seed. A year or two will clear out even the most
obstinate growth of pigweed.
Mustard, plantain, chess, dodder, cockle, crab-grass and Jimsonweed
are the most disagreeable of the common weeds. The best time to kill
them is when they are small; therefore, you should keep the ground
constantly stirred up that the young weeds may not have a chance to
get a firm hold of the soil. If they do get a start on you, don’t let
them ripen. Cut them down before they run to seed at all. Never let up
in your war upon them. That advice holds good for all weeds, whether
they be annuals, which die every year, biennials that last for two
years, or perennials that can stand the winters. The biennials commonly
found are wild carrot, thistle, moth mullein, wild parsnip and burdock.
These are best destroyed by cutting the roots below the leaves with a
grubbing hoe or spud. Be sure they are cut low enough, else they will
branch out and make new seeds.
Some weeds live more than two years and are called perennials, such
as many grasses, dock, Canada thistle, poison ivy, passion-flower,
horse-nettle, etc. The best thing to do with them is to dig them out
and take them away. Crude sulphuric acid applied to the soil kills
them, or they may be starved by covering them with boards or with
layers of straw. If they come up through the straw, lift it up a bit
and let it fall again. There is yet another method, and if you have
the time and land to spare, you will find it a good one. Smother them
out by a dense growth of useful plants. Some use buckwheat and others
cowpeas. The cowpeas are to be preferred as they enrich the soil by
the nitrogen their roots gather. And that is another story that has its
own time and place. Just now we are considering weeds, and you will
find that they will keep you considering most of the time, for the only
good thing so far known about them is, that they make even lazy farmers
till their crops, if they have any. Left to themselves, weeds shade the
crops, steal their nourishment, waste moisture, and probably poison the
soil. Not even a mortgage can eat up a farmer’s profits like weeds.
CHAPTER X.
INSECTS AND DISEASES.
The wise gardener uses the spray to prevent disease and the attacks
of insects, instead of waiting to fight them after they have arrived.
But if they attack your garden you must fight them intelligently and
without ceasing.
The destruction by insects, is, generally speaking, easily seen, but
diseases of plants are not so plain, and have only been carefully
studied even by experts during the past fifty years. At present, all
we know is how to fight insects and diseases by different substances,
put on or about the plants. As fresh discoveries are constantly being
made, we will some day get rid of all these difficulties. It is always
better to get the advice of an expert when insects or diseases become
troublesome.
Anything in the soil or surroundings of your garden which interferes
with the plants during the growing season, weakens the crop and lays
it open to attacks. Plants are like children. If they are badly fed,
poorly clothed, ill housed or neglected, they are far more likely to
become diseased than if they are kept in a good state. So look after
your drainage, the character of the soil and the sort of cultivation
you give it. All these help the crop to withstand disease. On the big
western wheat fields, it has been found that drainage has a most marked
effect upon blights, wilts and rust. Undrained wheat sections suffer
greatly from rust.
Just how diseases are caught by one plant or section of a garden from
another, is not fully known, but we know that insects often carry
infection from one to another, as in fruit trees to which bees go for
honey. The bee, coming from an infected tree to a perfectly healthy
tree, may bring with it the germs of the disease or the eggs of the
pest. Many scientific men now hold that plant diseases are transmitted
by germs, which are carried not by insects only but also by the wind
and the water in the soil.
The wrong use of fertilizers or barnyard manure may often induce
disease, simply because the unbalanced food supply causes irregularity
in growth, which weakens the plant’s resisting power. What is called
a “balanced ration,” is of the utmost importance to plants. It is not
enough that the soil contain an abundance of some of the elements of
plant food, but that it contain all of them in nice proportion, so that
the plant can draw all it needs, and not be overfed in some ways and
underfed in others. That is why we add humus, why we fertilize, why we
cultivate, and why we take note of our plants while growing. Only in
this way can we supply their wants.
Weeds spread diseases and we should be ashamed of them. Not only are
they usually favorable to the growth of insects, scales and blights,
but some kinds of weeds actually breed these parasites. Moreover, they
rob the soil of nourishment during the dry, hot spells, thus bringing
about various kinds of rots and mildews. And now it is supposed that
they give out a kind of poison, or excrement, which renders the soil
unfit for crops. All this shows the necessity of clean cultivation if
we would help our crops to resist both insects and diseases.
CHAPTER XI.
RE-SOILING.
There is a good deal of talk these days about re-soiling, but the word
is misleading. We cannot re-soil this earth or any part of it. The soil
is there for keeps. It was here before us, and will remain after we are
gone. All we can do is to put back into the soil some of the vegetable
matter of which we have robbed it; and this is really what we have in
mind when we speak of re-soiling. People have the habit of coining
almost meaningless words, and then wondering why everybody does not
know at once what they meant to say.
What we are after is, to put humus, which is really decayed vegetable
matter, back into the soil. Then that natural fertility, of which we
have been talking, will have a chance to get to work.
[Illustration: WINTER RESIDENTS IN A SUMMER CAMP.]
Now, decayed vegetable matter is part of what makes up stable and
barnyard manure, street and stable sweepings; but, in practice, this
does not afford enough humus: that is one reason why crops of clover,
cowpeas, velvet-bean, buckwheat, etc., are often grown only to be
plowed into the ground in the fall. These are the green manures which
decay and become a part of the soil before the next planting season.
Soil fertilized in this way will be richer, moister, darker, than soil
fertilized solely by stable manure or commercial fertilizer. Soils that
contain enough plant food to supply crops for a thousand years to come,
are often barren or yield but a niggardly crop. This may be because
they lack humus, which is the key that unlocks the store of plant food
in the soil, and makes it available for the seeds and tender rootlets.
How much more humus may do, we do not yet know, but every year fresh
discoveries are made, and if we are to be benefited by them, we must
get ourselves ready for the new truths by using those already known.
On his famous farm in Birmingham, Pa., “Bob” Seeds plows his cowhorn
turnips, tops and all, into the earth in the fall, and by spring they
have decayed. He says wherever a turnip has rotted, you can see the
difference in the color of the soil even some distance away, and the
abundance of the next season’s crop shows how quickly Nature responds
when we work with her.
All vines and garden waste may be used for humus if plowed into the
ground in the fall, unless they have been infested with insects or
troubled by diseases. It is well established, that insects and their
eggs manage to live over the winter by the aid of vines and refuse
left lying about, as well as by weeds that the careless farmer has
failed to destroy. It is well to cut all weeds, not only those that
bother you in your garden, but also those that grow along the road,
as often their seeds are carried by the wind or the birds into your
garden patch. Gather them into a heap and burn them, adding to your
bonfire all the sickly, dead, diseased, or insect-ridden vines and
plants, and completely destroy them. You may be sure that the bugs on
those particular plants will not bother you next year. What you lose
in possible humus by this practice, you can make up by growing green
manure, or even by buying some of the prepared humus materials now on
the market.
The _Long Island Agronomist_, in a recent issue, tells of one of these
materials which comes from New Jersey, and consists of innumerable
rootlets, leaf-fibres and vegetable matter of all descriptions. It is
gathered from the peatbogs of New Jersey and is really the wash from
mountains and hills carried down by streams in freshet times, until
some level was reached where this deposit was made. When spread on the
land or mixed with the earth, it is found to hold much moisture, for
each particle swells up as if it were a sponge, and the crops planted
on soil treated with this preparation do remarkably well. It was so
very expensive at first as to be almost prohibitive except for very
valuable crops, but the price is now such that many a man can afford to
use it, especially if he cannot afford the time or space to grow his
own green manure.
Nothing looks nicer about a house than a green lawn, with
smooth-cropped, velvety surface, but nothing is harder to maintain
after a few years of cropping. This is because a well-kept lawn is
carefully raked after each clipping, and is kept free from falling
leaves or other vegetable waste matter. It must be admitted that the
general effect is better, particularly when the lawn stretches from
the front of the house to the roadside. But the lawn is, nevertheless,
being starved, and though watered every day it cannot keep up its
velvety surface indefinitely, unless supplied with the food it needs.
This is Nature’s own secret for replenishing the earth with good crops,
and all you need do is to observe what is going on around you, to find
daily proof of it.
To quote Mr. Seeds again: “Every two years, we ought to sow clean blue
grass or lawn grass seed over the lawn. I prefer to mow often and leave
the clippings on the lawn. It is the blanket and vegetable matter that
will do the lawn good. Every few years I cover the lawn with barnyard
manure, in the fall; let it lie there all winter and that which we rake
off in the spring we put on the garden. This is a little trouble, but I
want to say that I made more money creating my lawn than I ever did in
taking a fat ox from the stall, or a bushel of potatoes from my cellar.
“A man will stand on the public road in front of my place, and give me
more for my property on account of my lawn; but money is not the only
thing in the world. The lawn makes the boys and girls want to stay on
the farm. It is on our lawn that we spend our spare moments on Sundays,
entertaining our friends, in the summer; and there, beneath the shade
of ‘the old apple-tree,’ the smoke curls more beautifully from my
chimney than from any other I ever saw.”
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.
We cannot use the wheel-hoe on beds; that is why we now plant in rows.
If your plot allows rows one hundred feet long, you will find one row
of any vegetable enough for family use. Let them run crosswise of the
slope of the ground if your patch is not level, else the rain may make
channels of your seed rows. If possible, choose a southern exposure
for your garden; because this gets all the sun, it will be earlier
than less favored exposures. Lay out a plan of your land and work with
a definite purpose. The “rule of thumb” is no more satisfactory in
gardening than in carpentering.
If the slope of your land allows it, run your rows north and south,
so that each row may get the sun from the east in the morning, and
from the west in the afternoon. Put asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs
and other permanent vegetables in a row at one side, so they may not
interfere with the plowing of the rest of the garden.
Plant vegetables of the same height together, so far as the tillage
required will allow. Put the tall ones at the back, so as not to shade
the others. If you have a hedge, a building or a strip of woods as a
windbreak on the side where the wind blows worst in winter, you will
get vegetables a fortnight earlier in the spring, and probably a month
later in the fall. The more protected the garden, the warmer the soil,
and warm soil means quick and abundant returns. That is one reason why
we use so much manure. It warms and quickens the soil.
Plant vegetables that ripen at the same time as near together as their
size, habits and tillage requirements will permit.
Practice rotation; for instance, lima beans should not immediately
follow string beans or peas. As far as possible, keep the plants
subject to the same insects and diseases together. It is easier to
treat them, and besides, it leaves the other portions of the plot
uninfested, if they get so bad that you have to change the position of
the plants.
If you are growing fruits, you could plant a row of apple trees about
fifteen feet apart on the northern border, plums and pears on the
west, and cherries and peaches on the east side. Then if you could put
a grape-trellis next the apples, and a row of gooseberry, currant,
raspberry and blackberry bushes in front of the grapevines, you will
have a windbreak as a protection against the north winds, which will
prove profitable in itself as well as in its service to the vegetables.
Transplant freely; nearly all vegetables are the better for it,
especially lettuce and other salad plants. Sow seed thickly in the
first place. You can easily thin out or transplant, but you cannot
increase the number of plants if you have sown thinly. Even a small
proportion of weak seed that would not sprout would seriously affect
your crop. Besides, where you sow thickly, you can afford to weed out
all but the best and stockiest, and you are thus doing something to
improve the strain.
Keep your soil busy all the time. Dr. Watts said, “Satan finds some
mischief still, for idle hands to do,” and that might be paraphrased
to read that “Nature has great store of weeds in idle lands to grow.”
“Weeds are the farmer’s best friend, they force him to cultivate.”
But that friendship is only true where it has that effect. The farmer
who lets the weeds grow either in the garden rows or in the walks
and hedges, is going to find them his worst enemy. They poison and
suffocate his crop, and are also regular incubators of insects and
diseases. The best way to fight them is to starve them out with paying
crops. Therefore, as soon as one crop begins to ripen, plant another,
and then another, and so on. To grow but one crop is risky, unless
you are specializing and have prepared the best possible conditions
for that one crop. For a special market this is very profitable. But
usually companion-cropping is best. That gives two crops in the ground
at the same time, one maturing before the other needs the space. Thus
late celery may be planted between the rows of early celery; lettuce
with early cabbage; radishes with beets or carrots; corn with squash,
pumpkins or beans, and horse-radish with early onions or cauliflower.
Irrigation for arid soils and drainage for wet or clayey soils, are
the two opposite methods which bring astounding results. Any sort
of drainage is better than no drainage, but the best form so far
discovered is the tile drain laid about two and a half to four feet
below the surface. This carries away the surplus water and prevents
the roots of the crops being suffocated. On the other hand, irrigation
supplies to the dry lands the moisture they need. The tremendous
irrigation works carried on by the Government in the sandy, hitherto
barren, reaches of the west, are bringing results even more tremendous
than the works.
Hard, wet soil will not grow crops and here is where the advantage
of draining comes in. Drainage deepens the subsoil and removes the
water; it deepens the surface also and makes more of the plant food in
the soil available. Wet soil is sticky and hard for the seeds to push
their way through; but drainage will improve its texture and make it
crumble and fall apart easily, or as the experts say, it will make it
“friable.” At the same time it will prevent it washing or “leaching”
away. But even this does not tell all of the advantages of drainage. It
warms the soil and by making the ground more porous allows the roots to
go deeper in search of their food and moisture. This in turn enables
plants to withstand drought and hot weather better and makes returns
more sure. It also permits working the ground earlier in the spring and
after rains, because, the more porous the soil, the quicker it absorbs
and stores moisture that comes in rain.
There are germs in the soil which change the nitrogen into nitrates,
the form in which nitrogen becomes the real plant food, and drainage
favors the development of these germs. You see how important good
drainage is.
Get the tools you need. You cannot afford to be without implements if
you are cultivating intensively. That does not mean that you must get
all the advertised garden tools, or even all that your neighbor has.
Although a tool may be the best of its kind, that is not reason enough
for buying it. You must have a use for it on your plot. Get whatever
you have a use for, and get only the best. It pays in the long run.
A list of tools and costs is given in “Three Acres,” and in “A Little
Land,” so it is necessary only to note here that the spading fork is a
far better tool than the spade; some gardeners never use a spade. The
spading-fork is easier to use and breaks the soil much better.
The seeder, attached to the wheel-hoe, is also a saver of labor and
of seed: it makes the rows quite straight, so that they are easy to
keep free from weeds; it drops the seeds at even distances and if
your soil is as fine as it should be, it covers them all just deep
enough—provided you have learned to fix the gauges right to start on.
Combination tools, those that do several different things, sometimes
work well, but they usually get out of repair quickly, and are apt
to puzzle the beginner. Get the best and simplest form of the tool
you want, and keep it always in condition for use. Tools that are
not cleaned after use are spreaders of disease. Cleanliness prevents
and cures. See to it that your cultivating tools, your harvesting
baskets and bags, and your storage bins are thoroughly cleaned, and
you will soon discourage the bugs. They will regard you as cold and
unsympathetic, and your garden as a place to be avoided.
Don’t be afraid to use manure, both stable and green, and when you
must, use commercial fertilizer. But this is expensive and is only
profitable under particular crops. You won’t need it, if you keep the
soil supplied with humus.
Don’t waste kitchen slops or any other waste water. It all has
fertilizing qualities that will help your garden. Even in the winter it
is a good plan to pour your slops on the ground, choosing a different
spot each day so that no one place may get too wet and leave surface
pools. Mankind in the lump is stupid, so stupid that we drain our
fertilizing matter into our harbors and then dig it out again at the
cost of four dollars the yard.
But you need not be so stupid as that. Even some of our cities are now
learning the value of sewage, notably San Antonio, Texas. This city,
with its 85,000 inhabitants, has solved the problem of what to do with
its sewage, although the city fathers leased the rights to a private
corporation, instead of providing for the city’s own disposal of it.
This company carries the sewage six miles out of town, and has built
five miles of canal, through which the surplus sewage not used in
irrigating, flows upon a filter-bed where all solids are removed, and
the water runs into a big basin which covers about 1000 acres. This
basin being very shallow, the sun’s rays reach the bottom of it, and
purify the water, so that, though it enters one end of this basin as
sewage, it flows out of the other as pure water. Chemical analyses and
tests have proved this many times over, and we might take a hint from
this at home to “raise our darkened windows and open wide our doors, to
let the blessed sunshine in.” It is the best destroyer of disease and
impurity yet discovered.
The company’s acres along the line of the canal profited so much from
this irrigation, that farmers soon began to purchase the irrigating
sewage water for use on their forage crop fields, and for root crops
particularly. The solids are spread on the surface of the lands upon
which the clear, purified water is to be used, and the results have
been most satisfactory. San Antonio really makes a profit out of that
which is costing other cities millions every year, and in doing this
has shown us another way to work, in bringing into use all lands that
are available in any way for intensive cultivation.
Plenty of manure and thorough cultivation are almost a complete
protection against drought. If you have plowed deep, manured
thoroughly, added humus and maintained tillage, you can laugh at the
drought that would once have spelled ruin for the farmer in any part
of the country. You have been told this before in this very book, but
that is no reason why it should not be repeated. It is of such great
importance, that the average farmer would make no mistake if he had it
made into a motto printed in large and striking type, and hung it where
he could see it a dozen times a day. It is part of the “How to Work,”
and a mighty big part, as you will learn, whether you practice it or
neglect it.
Use your brains; that’s what they are for. After you get your farm
started, you can get cheap and unintelligent labor, to keep it going,
if you wish; but you can only reap a profit from intelligent labor,
and you must furnish the intelligence yourself. Plan your work, and
make the most of your soil, your climate and your market. Things that
everybody grows bring low prices, but things that you alone grow, or
that you grow better than your neighbors, bring good returns all the
year round.
We have to learn, you know, and if we won’t learn by doing right
and profiting by it, then we shall have to learn by doing wrong and
suffering for it—“the way of transgressors is hard.”
If you have very little time or very little land, you will probably get
the best return for your time and money by growing radishes early in
the season with lettuce, followed by bush-beans or tomatoes and then
sweet corn.
Put some nasturtiums in any odd space and climbing nasturtiums and
morning-glories on your fence, and you will have a very creditable
looking garden—big returns for little expenditures.
If you haven’t got any land, don’t let that discourage you: grow
some things in a window box and learn how, so that you have learned
something when you do get some land.
You can grow mushrooms in half a barrel in the cellar. The thing to do
is to get started growing something.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] NOTE.—Another way is to mix a little soil with rain water, stir it
well, and put the litmus paper in it. Pure rain water is the only water
that can be successfully used in this test.
Part II.