I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening pay?
It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying. There is a popular
notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let it alone; and I
may say that there is a public opinion that will not let a man or woman
continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does not pay. And public
opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the
ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular clamor when I discuss the
profit of my garden.
As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I know that a
sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but it is really
one of the most expensive. It is true that we can all have front seats,
and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do for the opera; but
the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed are rather dear. Among
them I should name a good suit of clothes, including some trifling
ornament,--not including back hair for one sex, or the parting of it in
the middle for the other. I should add also a good dinner, well cooked
and digestible; and the cost of a fair education, extended, perhaps,
through generations in which sensibility and love of beauty grew. What
I mean is, that if a man is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with
the love of beauty undeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him:
so that it appears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are
as costly as anything in our civilization.
Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You
can only estimate what a thing is worth to you. Does gardening in a city
pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or a trotting-horse,
or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or your hair cut. It
is as you like it. In a certain sense, it is a sort of profanation to
consider if my garden pays, or to set a money-value upon my delight in
it. I fear that you could not put it in money. Job had the right idea
in his mind when he asked, “Is there any taste in the white of an
egg?” Suppose there is not! What! shall I set a price upon the tender
asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which made the sweet spring a reality?
Shall I turn into merchandise the red strawberry, the pale green pea,
the high-flavored raspberry, the sanguinary beet, that love-plant the
tomato, and the corn which did not waste its sweetness on the desert
air, but, after flowing in a sweet rill through all our summer life,
mingled at last with the engaging bean in a pool of succotash? Shall
I compute in figures what daily freshness and health and delight the
garden yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as
soon as the first seeds got above ground? I appeal to any gardening
man of sound mind, if that which pays him best in gardening is not
that which he cannot show in his trial-balance. Yet I yield to public
opinion, when I proceed to make such a balance; and I do it with the
utmost confidence in figures.
I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the cost of
gardening, the potato. In my statement, I shall not include the
interest on the value of the land. I throw in the land, because it would
otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on city land is
taxes. I therefore make the following statement of the cost and income
of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connection with other
garden labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfy the income-tax
collector:--
Plowing.......................................$0.50
Seed..........................................$1.50
Manure........................................ 8.00
Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days.... 6.75
Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,
picking up, 5 days at 17 cents........... 0.85
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Total Cost................$17.60
Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes,
at 2 cents..............................$50.00
Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig........ .50