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.