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
_____
Total Cost................$17.60
Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes,
at 2 cents..............................$50.00
Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig....... .50