SOME METHODS
We must not put all our time into one crop unless we are rich enough
to do our own insurance; for drought, or damp; or accident,
ill-adapted seed, or general unfavorable conditions may make
failures of one or more crops. But in variety and succession of
crops is safety and profit. In order to succeed, crop must be made
to follow crop, so that the ground is used to its full capacity. To
leave it fallow for even a week is to invite weeds and to lose much
of the advantage of tillage, as well as so much time.
In the North, seeds of many kinds should be sown from the first of
March to the first of August; in the South they should be sown in
every month.
By following the simple time tables for planting you will find work
ready and crops maturing and ready for sale in every month in the
year.
There is an admirable table of the time to plant, given in "How to
Make a Vegetable Garden," though it does embrace some weird
vegetables, explaining, for instance, that pats-choi is used like
chards, and that "Scolymus is sowed like Scorzonera."
One can live while waiting for the crops to come up, for many crops
mature rapidly.
Specialties give employment only during a few months of each year
and bring returns only at periods of the year, but the returns can
be made almost immediate and the work almost continuous.
Long Island and Jersey farmers in marketing their crops sell
Spinach and Radishes in April
Peas, Early Onions, and Lettuce in May
Asparagus and Strawberries in June
Tomatoes, Cucumbers, and Cabbage Seeds in July
Early Potatoes, Peaches, and Beans in August
Onions and Potatoes in September
Celery in October
Cauliflower in November
Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts in December
Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts in January
Brussels Sprouts in February
Brussels Sprouts in March
This order of crops can be varied to suit conditions.
"The old practice of growing vegetables in beds usually entails more
labor and expense than the crop is worth; and it has had the effect
of driving more than one boy from the farm. These beds always need
weeding on Saturdays, holidays, circus days, and the Fourth of July.
Even if the available area is only twenty feet wide, the rows should
run lengthwise and be far enough apart (from one to two feet for
small stuff) to allow of the use of the hand wheelhoes, many of
which are very efficient. If land is available for horse tillage,
none of the rows should be less than thirty inches apart, and for
late growing things, as large cabbage, four feet is better. If the
rows are long, it may be necessary to grow two or three kinds of
vegetables in the same row; in this case it is important that
vegetables requiring the same general treatment and similar length
of season be grown together. For example, a row containing parsnips
and salsify, or parsnips, salsify, and late carrots would afford an
ideal combination; but a row containing parsnips, cabbages, and
lettuce would be a very faulty combination. One part of the area
should be set aside for all similar crops. For example, all root
crops might be grown on one side of the plot, all cabbage crops in
the adjoining space, all tomato and eggplant crops in the center,
all corn and tall things on the opposite side. Perennnial crops, as
asparagus and rhubarb, and gardening structures, as hotbeds and
frames, should be on the border, where they will not interfere with
the plowing and tilling." ("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page
31.)
Usually where large acreages are worked there is a tendency to
devote a greater portion of the land to one crop and sometimes a
failure in this crop will mean ruin to the farmer, whereas, where
small areas are used, there is generally a diversity of the
higher-priced crops and a failure in one is not so likely to be
disastrous.
To get the greatest production from the soil two crops can be grown
in the same soil at the same time--one of which will mature much
earlier than the other, thereby giving its place up just about the
period of growth when the second crop would need more room. This is
known as companion cropping.
"In companion cropping there is a main crop and a secondary crop.
Ordinarily the main crop occupies the middle part and later part of
the season. The secondary crop matures early in the season, leaving
the ground free for the main crop. In some cases the same species is
used for both crops, as when late celery is planted between the rows
of early celery.
Following are examples of some companion crops:
Radishes with beets or carrots. The radishes can be sold before the
beets need the room.
Corn with squashes, citron, pumpkin, or beans in hills.
Early onions and cauliflower or cabbage.
Horseradish and early cabbage.
Lettuce with early cabbage."
("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 184.)
If fruit trees be planted, vegetables may be grown in rows. As soon
as the early vegetables mature they are removed, and a midsummer
crop planted. These are followed by a fall or winter crop.
Radishes, lettuce, and cabbage grow at the same time and on the area
formerly used for one crop. Early potatoes and early cauliflower are
followed by Brussels sprouts and celery, two crops being as easily
grown as one by intelligent handling. The best beans are grown among
fruit trees.
The principles of "double-cropping" are summarized by Professor
Thomas Shaw, in _The Market Garden._
"Onion sets may be planted early in the season and onion seeds may
then be sown. Between the rows cauliflower may be planted. Later
between the cauliflower, two or three cucumber seeds may be dropped.
The onion sets up around the cauliflower may be taken out first, and
the cauliflowers in turn may be removed in time to let the cucumbers
develop.
"Midway between the rows of onions grown from seeds, we can plant
radishes, lettuce, peppergrass, spinach, or some other early relish,
which will have ample time to grow and to be consumed before harm
can come to the onions from the shade of any one of these crops.
When the onions are well grown, turnips can be sown midway between
their rows."
So we get two crops of onions, besides cauliflowers, cucumbers, and
turnips off the same place. Weeds won't have much chance in soil
treated like that.
"Multum in Parvo Gardening" (Samuel Wood) claims L 620 ($3100)
from one acre by the expenditure of considerable capital in growing
fruit against brick walls--it cost over $3100 to prepare the land,
of which the walls cost $2300. In this system the fruit trees are
pruned and trained till they look like firemen's ladders.
"In the suburbs of Paris, even without such costly things with only
thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings, vegetables are grown in
the open air to the value of L 200 per acre." ("Fields,
Factories and Workshops," page 80.)
"At the present time, for fully 100 miles along the Rhone, and in
the lateral valleys of the Ardeche and the Drome, the country is an
admirable orchard, from which millions worth of fruit is exported,
and the land attains the selling price of from L 325 ($1625) to
L 400 ($2000) the acre. Small plots of land are continually
reclaimed for culture upon every crag." (Same, page 133.)
In California we hear (from George P. Keeney) that while good truck
and fruit lands usually sell for $25 to $350 per acre, the land with
full-bearing fruit or nut trees often sells at $1000, and even up to
$2000 per acre. There is no reason why any intelligent persons
should not make their land increase in the same way.
The London Daily News reports that in one year, which was not a good
season for all crops, on a half acre of land, Mr. Henry Vincent, of
Brighton, England, raised the following products:
2660 cabbages, 70 bushels spinach, 950 cauliflowers, parsley, 1460
lettuces, 660 broccoli, 16 bushels potatoes, 19-1/4 bushels Brussels
sprouts, 106-1/2 gallons peas, 120 gallons artichokes, flowers, 267
vegetable marrows, 2976 carrots, 264 bundles radishes, 14 gallons
French beans, 12 gallons currants' 95-1/2 punnets mustard, 27 pounds
mushrooms, rhubarb, 948 bushels sprout tops, 38 dozen leeks, 1150
plants, 11-1/4 gallons broad beans, 97 bundles sea-kale, 978 bundles
of asparagus-kale, 504 beet roots, 2913 gallons gooseberries, 219
bundles mint, 20 bundles sage, 18 bundles of fennel, thyme, besides
one cartload of stones.
Mr. Vincent explains how he came to go into intensive cultivation:
"A few years ago the doctors said if I did not go out more I could
not live. Very well, just at that time there was an outcry about the
land not paying for cultivation. I could not understand this, for as
a boy at seven years of age I had to go out to farm work, therefore
I never went to school. Anyhow I thought something was very wrong if
the land would not pay; so, to compel myself to go out in the fresh
air, I took an allotment on the Sussex Downs to work in the early
morning before my daily duties began. I might say that I am a
waiter, and have been in my present situation forty years, so you
can understand I could not know much of land or garden work I could
not see my way clear in the few spare hours I get to take more than
half an acre of land to garden early, especially as I started
knowing practically nothing about such work, but I can manage to do
my half acre all alone.
"My garden is situated on the Brighton Race Hill ridge, and twelve
years ago it was but four inches of soil on chalk, but I now have a
foot of soil on the whole of the half acre, and year by year my
profits increase.
"Yes, get the men to stop on the land in this country. We ought not
to have workhouses. Every man could live, and live well, if he could
get the land, and would work it as it should be worked.
"Farmers and landowners grumble because the land does not pay. Now
for the fault. It is quite evident it is not the land, therefore, it
must be the fault of the man. Very well, get the land from these
landed proprietors, by sale preferred, and let it out to men, not by
1000 acres, as no man can farm well a thousand acres in England; let
the farms be greatly reduced, and then the land can be treated as it
should be. Most of us have children, and we all know how we love and
treat them. Treat the land in the same manner, feed it, and keep it
clean, and you will have no cause to complain. The land of old
England is as good as it ever was.
"I have serious thoughts of opening a kind of school for people who
would like to make $500 a year on an acre. It is to be done, and
done easily. I do know that one man alone can manage two acres, and
at the end of this year I shall be able to tell how much more he can
manage alone, so under my system one can gain L 4 a week off two
acres and do all one's self.
"If the land will produce over one hundred pounds per year per acre,
is it not wrong for a man to have, say, 500 or 1000 acres which in
no way can he properly manage; as, in the first place, he cannot
feed such an acreage, let alone keep it clean and gather in his
crops?"
In truth, what an acre may produce depends on time, place, and
circumstances The product of the best acre of land so situated that
its product could be sold at retail in a near-by market, and which
has been cultivated under the best management for a term of years,
would provide a very comfortable living. The product of other acres,
measured by what they produce to the cultivator in living, declines
through various grades down to almost nothing on the acre far from
railroads or difficult of access.
While in quantity and quality the least favored acre could be made
to produce as much as one best situated, yet, almost none of its
production would be available to sell, while the product of the
favorably located acre could be sold as rapidly as grown.