Transcriber's Note
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and
punctuation remains unchanged.
THE BUSY WOMAN'S
GARDEN BOOK
[Illustration: _An outside window box that harmonizes with the general
architectural scheme_]
THE BUSY WOMAN'S
GARDEN BOOK
BY
IDA D. BENNETT
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1920,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
INTRODUCTION
This little book has a very definite aim—a big aim too, though two
little words or even one will serve to define it—To help, or better
still, perhaps—helpfulness. It does not aim to tell everything there
is to tell about gardening; that would be encyclopedic and quite out
of the scope of a small, practical work on gardening, but it does aim
to give, in plain, everyday language sufficient and clear directions
for caring for an ordinary kitchen garden in a way the least exhausting
of time and strength and with all unnecessary expenditure eliminated.
It covers all necessary detail except that of personal equation;
that—Dear Woman, when the spring time calls and you go forth full of
enthusiasm, is, in the language of the day—"Up to you." Your garden
will give back to you just What you put into it—no more, and the more
you give to it the less it will exact of you; neglect it ever so little
and it will prove a hard taskmaster indeed, or a living reproach—a
reproach that will burgeon and bloom in noxious weeds and sickening
plants, a garden where the worm dieth not and the aphis and grub revel
undisturbed and unchecked.
There is nothing so easy as to keep a garden in perfect order, free
from weeds and pernicious insect life, nothing easier than to have the
reverse of this. One cannot garden successfully on the principle that
one can work in the garden when there is nothing else to do, no one
to play with, nowhere to go. The garden should be first to a certain
extent, and this is not an arbitrary or exacting condition for the toll
exacted is paid for many times over in the peace of mind that comes
from work well and conscientiously done, to say nothing of the economic
value of thrifty vegetables.
There are always critical times in the life of the garden;—the
gardener must recognize these and be prepared to give just the
assistance the condition requires at just the time it is required;
if this is done promptly it will surprise one who has had no system
heretofore in the garden work to see how little time is really required
to care for a garden successfully. The failure to co-operate with
nature at the right time may result in many hours of wearisome work.
Take the matter of weeds;—if the planting is closely watched and the
weeds cut off as quickly as they show a seed leaf above ground, and
before they have stuck their roots deeply enough into the ground to
make more than a mere stirring of the soil necessary, an entire week's
crop of weeds will be destroyed with one stirring of the soil. Weeds
come in relays a week or ten days apart, come not at all if the soil
is kept properly stirred—which should be after every rain and between
if the rain is infrequent, and it is well worth one's time to exercise
a little self-denial and give this cultivation even though it may mean
letting something else go that one would like to do.
And one need not worry too much about being scientific in one's
gardening; insecticides, fungicides and the like are the allies of the
careless gardener, but the wide awake, industrious gardener has little
need of them. Healthy, vigorous plants are not especially susceptible
to insect attacks and with the exception of potato bugs, squash bugs
and cabbage worms the danger from them is merely negligible, but the
careless, slovenly gardener is a real and pestilential danger.
There is much in choosing the right time of day for work in the
garden; it is delightful to wield the rake and hoe in the cool of the
afternoon, but where the object is the destruction of weeds the morning
hours of a sunny day will give permanent results as the weeds will be
killed by the hot sun, while those hoed up in late afternoon will often
be revived by the coolness and dew of night and be ready to withstand
the morrow's sun, so take the morning hours for destroying weeds, and
the cooler hours for planting seeds, staking up plants, thinning out
plants and the like but always the bright, dry sunny hours for tying up
such vegetables as need blanching: cauliflower, endive and the like.
This will make for success in the various operations and comfort in
working.
Where it is necessary to water the garden this should if possible be
done after the sun has nearly or quite gone from it in order to reduce
the loss of moisture by evaporation; this is especially desirable
in city gardens where the water is metered and always, if possible
a night's watering should be followed by shallow cultivation the
following forenoon to restore the dust-mulch and necessitate as little
watering as possible. These are a few of the little attentions which
make for success in the garden and minimize the sum of the season's
work.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PLANNING THE GARDEN 1
II HOTBEDS, COLD FRAMES AND FLATS 12
III PLANTING SEED IN THE OPEN GROUND 36
IV TRANSPLANTING 48
V GARDEN TOOLS 53
VI HOLDING AND INCREASING THE FERTILITY OF
SOIL 64
VII ASPARAGUS 80
VIII EARLY SPRING VEGETABLES 86
IX MID-SEASON VEGETABLES 122
X VEGETABLES OF THE VINE FAMILY 171
XI VEGETABLES LESS COMMONLY GROWN 186
XII QUANTITY OF SEED REQUIRED 200
XIII SWEET, POT AND MEDICINAL HERBS 202
XIV PLANT ENEMIES AND INSECTICIDES 208
XV WINTER STORAGE 220
XVI CANNING THE GARDEN SURPLUS FOR WINTER
USE 232
XVII FALL WORK IN THE GARDEN 256
XVIII THE ANNUAL GARDEN 261
XIX THE HARDY GARDEN 273
XX THE PLANTING OF FALL BULBS 282
XXI ECONOMY IN THE PURCHASE OF SHRUBBERY 289
XXII A CONTINUOUS SUCCESSION OF BLOOM IN
THE SHRUBBERY 297
XXIII GARDENING FOR SHUT-INS 308
XXIV THE POSSIBILITIES OF A CITY FLAT 318
THE BUSY WOMAN'S
GARDEN BOOK
THE BUSY WOMAN'S GARDEN BOOK
CHAPTER I
PLANNING THE GARDEN
The favorable location of the garden is the initial step in its
planning. The kitchen garden—always an important auxiliary of the
kitchen—is now, in these days, something more; it is becoming more
and more a part of the domestic routine; it is a woman's garden, to
be planned for and cared for by the women of the family, and in that
relation must be considered from all its points of view. Location,
then, becomes of first importance. It must be accessible, that its care
may demand as little extra work as possible, and that little be given
to the actual cultivation and care and not to going back and forth.
If one can run out and cultivate a row of lettuce or train up a row of
peas while waiting for the irons to heat or the kettle to boil, then
one will find the sum total of the garden work far less onerous than
where one must calculate on going over the entire plat, or a stated
portion of it, at one operation.
A location close to the house, more or less secluded, that one may
work free from interruption and espionage and where the vegetables may
bask in the sun from early morning till late afternoon, is desirable,
and this is best achieved in a southern exposure with the garden rows
running north and south.
If the garden plot is protected by buildings or a high fence, or
a wind-break of evergreen on the north it will afford a favorable
position for the necessary hotbeds and cold frames and the close
relationship of the two will work for efficiency in handling.
A warm, mellow, sandy loam is the ideal soil for the vegetable garden,
but even a poor soil may be so built up and redeemed by proper
cultivation and fertilising as to make the quality of the soil of
secondary consideration, but if one can have both at once then one is
happy indeed. Tenacious, clayey soil or newly broken sod ground should
not, however, be undertaken by a woman, such ground is a man's job.
But it is the warm, sunny location that is vital to the successful
cultivation of the garden. All the early vegetables—peas, lettuce,
endive and the like—call for abundant sunshine in the cool days of
early spring, and, as the season advances and the fall chill is in the
air at nightfall, then the warm sunshine will hasten the maturity of
such late comers as tomatoes, winter squash, citron and any late-sown
vegetables that are used to succeed the earlier growths. Again in the
late days of winter or early spring those vegetables that were left in
the ground for early use—the parsnips, and salsify, will be available
much earlier if given a warm location where the ground thaws readily,
rather than a cold exposure that holds frost late in the season.
A piece of ground adjoining other cultivated areas is far preferable
to an isolated plot as it may be ploughed in conjunction with the
larger piece and so kept in a better grade and condition. An isolated
garden plot, which must be prepared separately necessitating a dead
furrow in the center, becomes, in the course of a few years a dish
shaped area very disagreeable to cultivate; an open area, on two sides
at least, obviates this in a measure and renders the ground more level
and easily prepared.
Any garden spot, however, should always be ploughed rather than
spaded and as deep ploughing as possible should be the rule. If the
soil is good go as close to the bottom of it as possible, the shallow
ploughing so universal—seldom more than six inches in depth, does
not give a mellow bed for any but shallow rooted vegetables. Carrots,
salsify, parsnips and similar long-rooted things must fairly drill
their way into the hard ground below the shallow cultivation, this
resulting in deformed, stunted or many twigged roots, unsalable and of
little value for the home table. The long, smooth, beautiful bottoms
are only produced by deep cultivation to start with and, of course,
the subsequent cultivation must efficiently supplement this. A very
excellent method of preparing the ground would be to turn a deep furrow
with the plough and follow this with the subsoil plough, stirring up
the subsoil, but not mixing it with the top soil; this would give
several inches of loose soil beneath the first furrows that the roots
could readily penetrate. So many consider that all the fertility in a
soil is contained in the few top inches of soil, and in a measure this
is true—the available fertility is right there—but there is a wealth
of unused fertility in the lower strata, but lack of cultivation, lack
of moisture and most of all, lack of the humus which makes the soil
retentive of moisture, render it unavailable, but if it is broken
up and gradually mixed with the humus of the upper soil it becomes
available and the soil is increasing in fertility instead of growing
thinner and poorer year by year.
Following the ploughing comes the smoothing and leveling of the ground
by dragging with a spiked or spring tooth harrow; this part of the
work should be very thoroughly done; too fine a seed bed can never
be produced, whatever the means employed and the use of drags and
harrows by no means spells the whole operation of fitting a garden
for planting. After the dragging the garden rake is in order and the
ground must be raked over and over until thoroughly fine and free from
roughage of sticks, stones, clods and the like. If any weeds have been
drawn to the surface in dragging they must be pulled out and thrown
aside. If there is a dead furrow in the middle of the plot then the
raking should be towards that from both directions so as to fill it in
as much as possible and so restore the level of the ground.
It is not necessary to rake the entire garden at once if time and
strength are at a premium. One may rake a space sufficient for the
first planting and when that is done rake another space and so equalize
the labor, but it is easier to rake soon after the preliminary fitting
is done than to leave it until a rain has packed the earth and made
it heavy to move. A good rain, however, should always precede the
planting, if possible, as newly worked ground is not sufficiently
settled for sowing seed and not so desirable for setting out of plants.
The arrangement of the vegetables in the garden has much to do with
the convenience of caring for it. It is always a good arrangement to
plant the early vegetables, such as lettuce, radishes, beets, endive
and onions at the end of the garden nearest the house where they are
most easily available as one has occasion to use them in preparing a
meal. Then, too, all these small things are planted a standard distance
apart—usually twelve or fifteen inches,—twelve if the gardener is
addicted to trowsers, fifteen if skirts are in evidence, for it is
difficult to work in a narrower space, especially among the tender tops
of seedling onions, in petticoats. So, with the rows running north and
south, that the vegetables may receive the greatest possible amount of
sunshine, and the vegetables planted in consecutive rows of increasing
distances apart, one has a planting schedule economical of space and
labor.
This order of planting should also be made to include height as well
as distance apart of the rows of vegetables. Low growing things should
always occupy the front rows of space and not be overshaded by tall
growths. For this reason the planting of sweet corn in the garden plot
is not desirable; it is best to give this a space by itself—preferably
on the north side of the garden. Vine vegetables, too, have little
place in the garden proper—a place for them on the south side of the
garden should be reserved if possible, for with the best of management
they will break bounds and encroach on other plants. I recall a
planting of English marrows which were placed in the garden next to a
row of red peppers. They were bought for bush marrows but proved to be
the vine variety and in a month's time had practically taken possession
of that end of the garden; peppers and tomatoes were smothered under
a luxuriant growth of squash vines whose luxuriance was only equalled
by the astonishing amount of fruit they bore. In desperate effort to
check their encroachments great lengths of vines, bearing half grown
marrows, were ruthlessly removed with no more apparent result than to
encourage a still more luxuriant growth and to increase the gardener's
knowledge of the amount of pruning a really ambitions, vigorous vine
will stand.
The bush varieties of many vegetables are a great boon to the small
home gardener as most of them are prolific bearers and require no more
room than a hill of potatoes or an eggplant. Squash, melons, lima
beans—all have dwarf forms that are preferable to the usual vine
varieties.
The home garden should not be too large—a plot forty by eighty feet
will grow all the summer and winter vegetables a small family can make
use of and a considerable surplus for sale, especially is this the
case where the corn and vines are planted outside the garden proper.
Potatoes, too, are excluded from this estimate, though a few rows of
early potatoes may find room available.
The accompanying planting table, while intended to be merely
suggestive will be of use as indicating the amount of room required
for the several varieties of plants and a convenient arrangement.
The amount to be grown of any one variety however, must be decided
by the individual gardener and it will be time well spent to make a
diagram for one's self, based on the amount of various vegetables that
experience shows to be needed. To those vegetables to which the family
are most addicted should always be added a few that are grown with the
occasional guest in mind and the few things that one likes to try from
season to season, and that add zest to gardening but should never be
allowed to occupy space needed for more standard sorts.
PLANTING-TABLE FOR A SMALL GARDEN APPROXIMATELY FORTY BY EIGHTY FEET
Lettuce—May King, 1 row. Transplant from hotbed to 9 in. apart
Onions—Transplanted seedlings of Prizetaker, Ailsa Craig
or Silver Skin, 1 in. 1 oz.
Parsley—Dwarf Perfection. Transplant to 9 in. apart 1 Pkt.
Endive—One row, Giant Fringed. Transplant to 9 in.
apart 1 Pkt.
Beets—Two rows, Crosby's Egyptian. Thin to 3 in. 2 oz.
Carrots—Two rows, Danvers Half Long. Thin to 3 in. 1 oz.
Parsnips—Large Sugar or Hollow Crown. Two rows.
Thin to 3 in. ½ oz.
Salsify—Two rows, smooth, Mammoth Sandwich Island.
Thin to 3 in. 1 oz
Spinach—One row, All Season. Thin to 8 in. ½ oz.
Lima Beans—Fordhook Bush. Thin to 6 in. 2 lb.
String Beans—Wardwell's Kidney Wax, or Navy Beans.
Two rows 2 lb.
Peas—Double rows, Senator, Gradus, Telephone. On wire
netting 2 lb.
Peppers—One row, Ruby Giant, Bull Nose, or Pimento.
12 in. apart 1 Pkt.
Bush Muskmelons—Three ft. apart 1 Pkt.
Okra—Perkins' Long Pod. Half row, thin to 1 foot ½ lb.
Eggplant—Black Beauty. 18 in. 1 Pkt.
Early Potatoes—Dreer's Perfection, Early Ohio. Fifteen
inches apart 1 Pkt.
Cauliflower—Early Snowball. Twenty in. apart 1 Pkt.
Cauliflower—Dry Weather. Twenty in. apart 1 Pkt.
Cabbage—Late Flat Dutch. 2 ft. apart 1 Pkt.
Squash—Delicious, Burbank's Hubbard. 6 ft. apart each
way 1 oz.