CHAPTER XVII FALL WORK IN THE GARDEN

If the garden has been well tended during the growing season there will not be much rubbish to clear away and the absence of weeds will make the harvesting of the winter vegetables a pleasure. A bright, sunny day is best for digging all root vegetables, especially potatoes which should be allowed to lie on the ground until dry enough for the dirt to shake off, leaving the tubers clean and sightly.

After frost has killed the vegetables so that no further good will be derived from them they should be pulled and piled in a heap to dry and be burned; especially is this desirable if they have been infested with any disease or insects during summer, but if free from any harmful conditions they should, preferably, be put on the compost heap to add fertility to the coming season's garden.

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Wire trellises, poles and wires used for the training of peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and the like should now be removed and stored away for next year. All boxes, boards or sash that can harbor insects or the chrysalids of cabbage or other worms, should be raised, cleaned and removed.

The winter treatment of the garden will depend upon conditions that have existed during summer. If the garden has been free from insects and disease it will have been a good plan to sow the entire area to rye for a cover crop during winter, to be turned under for green manure in the spring. This protects the ground from leaching during winter, especially if the winter should be open, and adds materially to the fertility of the soil, but if there has been trouble with insects and disease it will be better to fall-plough, leaving the ground in furrows so that as many as possible of the chrysalids and larv? of the various plant enemies may be destroyed.

If onion seed has been sown in August for258 early spring onions it will be well to give the beds a covering of straw or marsh hay at the approach of cold weather. The rhubarb rows may be banked with coarse manure from the barnyard and the asparagus bed may have the tops removed and the roots protected with manure; this will hasten the production of shoots in the spring and make stronger roots.

If there is a bit of land available for early peas it may be ploughed and the furrows filled with well-rotted manure, each furrow turned over the manure in the next and the rows marked with sticks; in early spring, drills may be opened with the hand cultivators and the seed for the very earliest peas sown.

If the lettuce, carrots, beets, salsify, endive, spinach, parsnips and radishes have proved satisfactory and any of the annual varieties have been allowed to go to seed it will be wise to save the seed for the coming season as the increasing shortage of seeds makes it more or less problematical whether a supply may be forthcoming another season.259 Lettuce, endive, spinach, Swiss chard, Chinese cabbage, and radishes seed freely the first year, beets, carrots, salsify, parsnips and turnips the second year and the mature vegetables must be planted in the spring to produce seed. If there are good roots of carrots and beets, these may be stored in sand in the cellar and planted out in the spring when they will bloom and produce seed. The parsnips and salsify left in the ground may be dug in the spring and reset where they are to bloom and a few plants will give sufficient seed for the home garden. The seed from the best tomatoes should have been saved, a few melons, cucumbers and eggplants allowed to ripen and the finest of the red peppers saved for seed. The sweetest and driest of the winter squash should have its seed set aside for the coming year. Even should there prove to be an abundance of seed this saving will do no harm; the raising of seed of biennial vegetables is interesting and should there be a real scarcity of seed one will be very thankful of the forethought260 which makes the shortage innocuous as far as one's own garden is concerned and, besides, one may do one's little bit by supplying friends and neighbors.