Under this modest title, I purpose to write a series of papers, some of
which will be like many papers of garden-seeds, with nothing vital in
them, on the subject of gardening; holding that no man has any right to
keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hoping that those who come after
me, except tax-gatherers and that sort of person, will find profit in
the perusal of my experience. As my knowledge is constantly increasing,
there is likely to be no end to these papers. They will pursue no
orderly system of agriculture or horticulture, but range from topic to
topic, according to the weather and the progress of the weeds, which may
drive me from one corner of the garden to the other.
The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is not to
give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and cheaper
done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy
and the higher virtues, hope deferred and expectations blighted, leading
directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus
becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning.
I shall keep this central truth in mind in these articles. I mean to
have a moral garden, if it is not a productive one,--one that shall
teach, O my brothers! O my sisters! the great lessons of life.
The first pleasant thing about a garden in this latitude is, that
you never know when to set it going. If you want anything to come to
maturity early, you must start it in a hot-house. If you put it out
early, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost; for
the thermometer will be 90 deg. one day, and go below 32 deg. the night
of the day following. And, if you do not set out plants or sow seeds
early, you fret continually; knowing that your vegetables will be
late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watching your
slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When you have
planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire to see it
above ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see the young
plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremble lest the
seeds have burst their bands. Your spring is passed in anxious doubts
and fears, which are usually realized; and so a great moral discipline
is worked out for you.
Now, there is my corn, two or three inches high this 18th of May, and
apparently having no fear of a frost. I was hoeing it this morning for
the first time,--it is not well usually to hoe corn until about the 18th
of May,--when Polly came out to look at the Lima beans. She seemed to
think the poles had come up beautifully. I thought they did look well:
they are a fine set of poles, large and well grown, and stand straight.
They were inexpensive, too. The cheapness came about from my cutting
them on another man's land, and he did not know it. I have not examined
this transaction in the moral light of gardening; but I know people in
this country take great liberties at the polls. Polly noticed that the
beans had not themselves come up in any proper sense, but that the dirt
had got off from them, leaving them uncovered. She thought it would be
well to sprinkle a slight layer of dirt over them; and I, indulgently,
consented. It occurred to me, when she had gone, that beans always come
up that way,--wrong end first; and that what they wanted was light, and
not dirt.
Observation.--Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a garden.
I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries. Splendid berry
the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone. This patch has grown into
such a defiant attitude, that you could not get within several feet of
it. Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast out long, prickly arms in
all directions; but the bushes were pretty much all dead. I have walked
into them a good deal with a pruning-knife; but it is very much like
fighting original sin. The variety is one that I can recommend. I think
it is called Brinckley's Orange. It is exceedingly prolific, and has
enormous stalks. The fruit is also said to be good; but that does not
matter so much, as the plant does not often bear in this region. The
stalks seem to be biennial institutions; and as they get about their
growth one year, and bear the next year, and then die, and the winters
here nearly always kill them, unless you take them into the house (which
is inconvenient if you have a family of small children), it is very
difficult to induce the plant to flower and fruit. This is the greatest
objection there is to this sort of raspberry. I think of keeping these
for discipline, and setting out some others, more hardy sorts, for
fruit.