FARM GARDEN
The farm garden should be ample and contain not only enough vegetable and small fruits for the use of the family, but a surplus to sell or to give away. The farmer used to large areas is reluctant to undertake anything so small as he imagines the garden to be; hence, too often he plows it and leaves the planting and cultivation of it to the “women folks.” If he knew how to manage a garden he would find that the half-acre of land devoted to small fruits and vegetables could be made the most profitable and pleasurable part of the farm. Higher remuneration is received for the time spent in harvesting the products of a large, well kept garden, than in harvesting the cereals or milking the cows. It must be said, however, that there are good reasons for the farmer’s distaste for gardening, for the gardens, as usually laid out, necessitate the maximum of hand-culture and the minimum of horse-culture. The result of such gardens is a minimum of products secured by maximum of effort, and a resultant surplus of weeds.
Fig. 138. Plan of a home garden.
The garden should be about four times as long as it is broad, unfenced when possible, near to the house, and should be, in miniature, a farm with the cereals, grasses, and large fruits left out ([Fig. 138]). The side farthest from the dwelling should be devoted to the perennial plants, such as grapes, currants and other bush-fruits. Everything should be planted in straight rows, with spaces sufficiently wide between the rows to admit of horse-hoe culture. The grapes and blackberries might occupy one row, the raspberries and currants a second row, rhubarb, asparagus and like plants a third row. The spaces between these various fruits should be eight feet, as it is poor economy to so crowd vines and bushes as to force them to struggle the year through for plant-food and moisture. A rod or two of land, more or less, virtually amounts to nothing on the farm; crowding the plants is only admissible in the city or village. Here the plants may receive unusual care, and often may be irrigated at fruiting time from the city hydrant. The rows of ordinary vegetables may be thirty inches apart, except in case of such plants as onions, lettuce, and early beets. These small, slow-growing esculents should be planted in double rows. Starting from the last row of potatoes a thirty inch space is measured off, a row of lettuce planted, and then one foot from this a row of beets or onions; then leave a space thirty inches wide and again plant double rows, if more of the small esculents are wanted. The larger spaces may be cultivated by horse-hoe and the smaller spaces by hand-hoe. The entire garden which is to be planted in the spring should be kept fertile and plowed early in the spring, leaving that part of it which is not designed for immediate planting unharrowed. It may be necessary to replow. It certainly will be necessary to cultivate several times that part of the garden which is used for late-growing crops, such as cabbage and celery. As a rule, the farmer cannot afford to attempt to raise two crops on the same land the same year, since labor is everything and the use of land nothing; therefore, better prepare the ground by two or three plowings for the late crops, than to attempt to raise them on land which has parted with much of its readily available plant-food in producing the early crop. Then, too, land which has produced one crop is likely to be deficient in moisture, while land that has been plowed two or three times during the summer and kept well harrowed will be moist and contain an abundance of readily available plant-food. Early in the spring, when the land is cold and often too moist, it is best to leave the soil rough for a time if it is not to be planted immediately, that it may become somewhat dry and warm. As a rule, the garden should not be fenced, but the chickens should be restrained by fences a part of the time; at other times they may have free access to the garden, where they are often very beneficial in reducing the insect enemies.