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 and2 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 cultivation3 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 cultivated4 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 produced5 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 a6 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 it7 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 a8 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 desperate9 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 intended10 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.     ? oz.
11Salsify—Two rows, smooth, Mammoth Sandwich Island.
Thin to 3 in.     1 oz
Spinach—One row, All Season. Thin to 8 in.     ? 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     ? 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.