Farmers are apt to have very inferior gardens. The idea is, that in
the spring they have no time; the farm crops are of more importance.
In consequence of such a decision, no garden will be had unless the
housewife is willing to be gardenwife too. At her importunity at
length one horse is put to the plow and the garden is broken up—say
four inches deep. Possibly the boy is allowed to throw up the beds,
but very often even this is left to woman’s hand. She has to hunt up
seed; peppers are pulled off from the ceiling and eviscerated; drawers
are ransacked for the bag of radish seed or the paper of lettuce seed;
the old broken pitcher is taken from its long seclusion on the top of
the cupboard and emptied of its beans and peas; withal a few flower
seeds are added to grace the stock—four o’clocks; poppies, marigolds,
and touch-me-nots. Our gardenwife is not so admirable for lily hands
or fair face, or fairy form. She cannot walk over dewy flowers without
crushing them, as can a true heroine; for her specific gravity gives
evidence of a good constitution, health and habits.
Her praise is, that in a new country where woman unquestionably
suffers the most of hardships, she is cheerful, contented,
industrious, enterprising, and, like women the world over, seeks to
draw around herself objects of taste and beauty to decorate and cheer
her husband’s and her children’s home; and, if necessary, to do it by
the field-labor of her own hands. We could not forbear saying so much
of the meritorious gardener of more than half the rural gardens in the
West.
The seeds all mustered, she may be seen, after the breakfast things
are all done up, busy with spade and hoe, hiding her treasures. And
thus she does it. First a liberal suit of onion beds—savory vegetables
to the tongue and most unsavory to the nose—making it almost
impossible for these respectable neighbors to live together in peace,
one or other of them being in bad odor with the other. Next, a
seed-bed full of cabbages—significant to the imagination of cold-slaw,
sourcrout, etc. A good row of peas, and a few hills of running beans
are added. The alleys are ruffled with bush beans; a few early
potatoes, some corn for roasting-ears, with a slender bed for beets,
complete the stock of esculents. But sage, and summer savory, and
thyme, and rue, and sweet marjoram, tansy, boneset and wormwood are
attended to; a part for stuffing ducks and chickens—and the others for
curing those who have been too much stuffed _with_ them. The garden
yields in due time its first fruits; the potatoes come and go, the
corn is early plucked, lettuce shoots up its seed-stalk, peas render
their tribute and grow sere, beans rattle in the pod, and before
August her work is done and her garden forsaken except a small retinue
of flowers, which are nursed to the last. Weeds now make up for lost
time, and in a few weeks a weedy forest hides every trace of
cultivation. This is not a fancy sketch; we have been far from drawing
a picture from the worst specimens; it is a fair average case.
Our business is, not to quarrel with the farmer, but to suggest a
better plan for his garden. We saw the plan stated some years ago;
where, we have forgotten, but think well of it. It is simply this: let
the garden be an oblong—say three times as long as it is broad—and
cultivate it with the _plow_. Instead of having beds, let all seeds be
planted in rows running the whole length of the garden. For example,
begin with one row of beets—or more if wanted; next a row or rows of
carrots, parsnips, cabbages, potatoes, corn, and all about three feet
apart. The same system should be followed for small fruits—currants,
gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, etc.—and it will have this
advantage over common gardens, that the bushes will have sun and air
on all sides, and be more fruitful and more healthy for it. The whole
garden, thus arranged, can be kept in order with very little labor. A
single-horse plow will dress between the rows of the whole garden in a
very little time and save all hand-hoeing. The hand-weeding in the row
may be performed by women or children.
In large towns ground is scarce and labor abundant. Gardens,
therefore, are properly laid out for economy of space. In the country
the reverse is true; land is abundant but labor scarce and dear; of
course gardens should be laid out not to save room, but to economize
labor. The plan suggested will save labor, improve the garden, and
take from the wife the drudgery of the spade and hoe.