The Busy Woman's Garden Book

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE BUSY WOMAN'S GARDEN BOOK
An outside window box that harmonizes with the general architectural scheme
BY IDA D. BENNETT BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1920, BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)
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.