FARMERS’ GARDENS.
Farmers are apt to have very inferior gardens. The idea is, that in the spring they have no time; the farm crops are of more importance. In consequence of such a decision, no garden will be had unless the housewife is willing to be gardenwife too. At her importunity at length one horse is put to the plow and the garden is broken up—say four inches deep. Possibly the boy is allowed to throw up the beds, but very often even this is left to woman’s hand. She has to hunt up seed; peppers are pulled off from the ceiling and eviscerated; drawers are ransacked for the bag of radish seed or the paper of lettuce seed; the old broken pitcher is taken from its long seclusion on the top of the cupboard and emptied of its beans and peas; withal a few flower seeds are added to grace the stock—four o’clocks; poppies, marigolds, and touch-me-nots. Our gardenwife is not so admirable for lily hands or fair face, or fairy form. She cannot walk over dewy flowers without crushing them, as can a true heroine; for her specific gravity gives evidence of a good constitution, health and habits.
Her praise is, that in a new country where woman unquestionably suffers the most of hardships, she is cheerful, contented, industrious, enterprising, and, like women the world over, seeks to draw around herself objects of taste and beauty to decorate and cheer her husband’s and her children’s home; and, if necessary, to do it by the field-labor of her own hands. We could not forbear saying so much of the meritorious gardener of more than half the rural gardens in the West.
The seeds all mustered, she may be seen, after the breakfast things are all done up, busy with spade and hoe, hiding her treasures. And thus she does it. First a liberal suit of onion beds—savory vegetables to the tongue and most unsavory to the nose—making it almost impossible for these respectable neighbors to live together in peace, one or
other of them being in bad odor with the other. Next, a seed-bed full of cabbages—significant to the imagination of cold-slaw, sourcrout, etc. A good row of peas, and a few hills of running beans are added. The alleys are ruffled with bush beans; a few early potatoes, some corn for roasting-ears, with a slender bed for beets, complete the stock of esculents. But sage, and summer savory, and thyme, and rue, and sweet marjoram, tansy, boneset and wormwood are attended to; a part for stuffing ducks and chickens—and the others for curing those who have been too much stuffed with them. The garden yields in due time its first fruits; the potatoes come and go, the corn is early plucked, lettuce shoots up its seed-stalk, peas render their tribute and grow sere, beans rattle in the pod, and before August her work is done and her garden forsaken except a small retinue of flowers, which are nursed to the last. Weeds now make up for lost time, and in a few weeks a weedy forest hides every trace of cultivation. This is not a fancy sketch; we have been far from drawing a picture from the worst specimens; it is a fair average case.
Our business is, not to quarrel with the farmer, but to suggest a better plan for his garden. We saw the plan stated some years ago; where, we have forgotten, but think well of it. It is simply this: let the garden be an oblong—say three times as long as it is broad—and cultivate it with the plow. Instead of having beds, let all seeds be planted in rows running the whole length of the garden. For example, begin with one row of beets—or more if wanted; next a row or rows of carrots, parsnips, cabbages, potatoes, corn, and all about three feet apart. The same system should be followed for small fruits—currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, etc.—and it will have this advantage over common gardens, that the bushes will have sun and air on all sides, and be more fruitful and more healthy for it. The whole garden, thus arranged, can be kept in order with very little labor. A single-horse plow will dress
between the rows of the whole garden in a very little time and save all hand-hoeing. The hand-weeding in the row may be performed by women or children.
In large towns ground is scarce and labor abundant. Gardens, therefore, are properly laid out for economy of space. In the country the reverse is true; land is abundant but labor scarce and dear; of course gardens should be laid out not to save room, but to economize labor. The plan suggested will save labor, improve the garden, and take from the wife the drudgery of the spade and hoe.