THE KITCHEN GARDEN
The aim of the kitchen garden is to provide an abundance and variety
of food for the family. As the object of the cultivator is to get
the largest product for his labor, he ought to produce all that he
can consume on the least possible area. Though one may go into
mushrooms or frog raising as a money crop, the kitchen garden is the
first indispensable and should first be given attention.
For a garden choose a piece of land with a southern exposure,
sheltered on the north and west by woods, buildings, hedge, or any
kind of a windbreak. This arrangement will give the earliest garden,
for it gets all the sun there is. By running the rows north and
south, the rays of the sun strike the eastern side of the row in the
morning, and the western side in the afternoon.
The best time to take hold of a piece of land is in the fall,
because then it can be plowed ready for the spring planting. The
alternate freezing and thawing during the winter breaks up the sod
and the stiff lumps thrown up by the plow, so rendering the soil
pliable and easily worked. This is especially true of land that has
been reclaimed from the forest, or which has not been farmed for
many years.
Before the plowing is done, the land for the garden should be
manured at the rate of twenty-five large wagon loads to the acre. If
you can get a suitable plot that has been in red clover, alfalfa,
soy beans, or cowpeas for a number of years, so much the better.
These plants have on their roots nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which
draw nitrogen from the air. Nitrogen is the great meat-maker and
forces a prolonged and rapid growth of all vegetables.
After manuring and plowing, harrow repeatedly with a disk or cutaway
harrow until the soil is as fine as dust. Then you have a seed bed
which will give the fine roots a chance to grow as soon as the seeds
sprout. Too much stress cannot be laid upon the importance of
thoroughly working the soil at this time. Every stone, weed, or clod
that is left in the soil destroys to that extent the source from
which the plants can get their food.
A quarter-acre garden, which is big enough to supply the whole
family with a succession of vegetables for summer and fall, as well
as some potatoes and turnips for winter, will take a diligent
workman about four days to dig over and three days to plant. The
four days' work of digging will need to be done only once. The time
spent upon planting succession crops will depend upon the amount of
the garden reserved for rotation. The part kept for lettuce,
radishes, spinach, beets, Swiss chard, peas, string and wax beans
may be digged over in a favorable season for three successive
plantings, while the part devoted to early potatoes would need to be
digged only twice--once when the planting is done, and again when
crop is gathered and the ground be prepared for a crop of late
cabbage or turnips. A planting table for vegetables, which is
complete and comprehensive, is distributed free by the National
Emergency Food Garden Commission at Washington, D.C.
It is far more important to plant seeds at the proper depth than
that they should be planted thinly or thickly, for if they are
planted too thin, it makes a sort of advantage by giving the
individual plants ample room to develop to large size; and if
planted too thick, the evil can easily be remedied by thinning or
transplanting.
After the seeds come up, the size of almost all the vegetables can
be increased by transplanting, in favorable soil, which gives each
plant room for complete development.
It is too expensive to risk part of the land being unused or half
used on account of seeds dying, or to put in so many seeds in order
to insure growth that they will crowd one another. Where possible,
therefore, seeds should be sprouted and planted, not "sown."
Lima beans planted on edge with eye down will come up much sooner
than if dropped in carelessly so they have to turn themselves over.
In a small garden the time saved by such planting will repay the
extra trouble.
In some things like onions and radishes, however, it is better to
sow them thick, and then thin them out, so as to get the effect of
transplanting without so much labor. In others, like lettuce and all
the salad plants, transplanting gives new life and energy and
develops the individual plants in a way that will astonish those not
familiar with what free development means.
It is wise to plant corn after lettuce and radishes are gathered,
and more lettuce, corn, or salad, after the beans are picked. Then
late crops, cabbage, cauliflower or spinach, can go where early corn
grew, so that the small patch may earn your living and pay big
dividends.
Do not let two vegetables of the same botanical family follow each
other. For instance, lima beans should not follow green beans or
peas, as all the family draw about the same elements from the soil,
and are likely to have the same insects and diseases.
Do not plant cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins too near each other, as
they will often inter-impregnate and produce uneatable hybrids.
Decide what you are going to do with your crop before you plant it,
whether to sell it, at wholesale or at retail, to eat it, or to feed
it to stock.
C. E. Hunn, in the Garden Magazine, gives the following arrangement:
"For the beginner who wants to get fresh vegetables and fruits from
May until midwinter, a space 100 X 200 feet is enough.
"1. Plant in rows, not beds, and avoid the backache.
"2. Plant vegetables that mature at the same time near one another.
"3. Plant vegetables of the same height near together--tall ones
back.
"4. Run the rows the short way, for convenience in cultivation and
because one hundred feet of anything is enough.
"5. Put the permanent vegetables (asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs)
at one side, so that the rest will be easy to plow.
"6. Practice rotation. Do not put vines where they were last. Put
corn in a different place. The other important groups for rotation
are root crops (including potatoes and onions); cabbage tribe, peas
and beans, tomatoes, eggplant and pepper, salad plants.
"7. Don't grow potatoes in a small garden. They aren't worth the
bother.
"By training on trellis or wire, the smaller fruit plantings can be
made much closer.
"If fruits are wanted in the garden, plant a row of apple trees
along the northern border, plums and pears on the western sides,
cherries and peaches on the eastern side. Next the apple trees run a
grape trellis; and then in succession east and west, run a row of
blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants. These rows,
with the apple trees, form a windbreak, and besides adding to the
income, protect the vegetables. Next to the bush fruits, between
them and the ends of the vegetable rows, put rhubarb, asparagus, and
strawberries."
Insect pests must be watched for and their destructive work checked.
Ashes, slaked lime, or any kind of dust or powder destroy most
insects which prey on the leaves of plants. The reason for this is
that the dust closes the pores through which the insects breathe. It
should therefore be applied when the leaves are dry.
Cutworms can be destroyed by winter plowing. Rotation of vegetables
will reduce the damage from insects, because each family has its
peculiar bugs. By constant change to new soil, the pests have no
opportunity to get a foothold.
With bugs, as with boys, only those who are interested in them and
therefore understand them can manage them. It is fun to study the
insects--and it pays.
Here's another use of "land." Maybe a pool in your garden or a dam
in a little brook in it may help out your home garden bank account.
Of course a pond a few square yards in extent will give even better
returns if you can sell its produce at retail near by.
W. B. Shaw, a seventy-year-old veteran who lost his right arm during
the Civil War, lives in Kenilworth, D. C., and clears $1500 an acre
every year out of mud puddles--if mud puddles can be measured by the
acre.
Mr. Shaw is a pond lily farmer, and despite his lack of his good
right arm, he poles his boat about his mud puddles and gathers in
the pond lilies. His is not exactly a "dry farm" and neither wet nor
cloudy weather bothers him. Furthermore, the demand for his pond
lilies in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, and even New York,
and Chicago, is greater than he can supply.
Mr. Shaw secured this swamp for almost nothing, as it was considered
worthless. He divided it into fifteen pools with little dams between
them, and rollers on the dams to enable him to drag his boat from
one to the other. From May to late in September he is busy every
morning gathering lilies. His average is about 500 a morning, which
he ships in little galvanized iron tanks with wet moss.
Many school children know how to get results on a little land. Mr.
Mahoney, Superintendent of the Fairview Garden School, Yonkers, New
York, estimates that the total value of produce grown on the 250
gardens, composing the school plot, in all about one and one quarter
acres of land, was $1308, or at the rate of more than a thousand
dollars per acre. When it is taken into consideration that all the
labor was done by boys ranging in age from eight to twelve years,
this result is truly astonishing.
What may not adult skilled labor produce when applied freely to the
land.