Neglect is thus too much the rule. A row of currants, for example, is planted in a garden. It will indeed bear well with neglect; but an annual manuring and thinning out of old wood, would at least triple the size of the fruit, and improve its quality. The row of currants will furnish a daily supply of refreshing fruit to the table for months together. Why should its culture then be totally neglected, when a row of corn by its side of equal length, which will supply only a single feeding to a pen of hogs, is most carefully manured, watched, ploughed, and hoed? I have sometimes seen farmers who, after expending large sums in establishing a young orchard of trees, would destroy one-half by choking them with a crop of oats or clover, because they could not afford to lose the use of the small strip of land a few feet wide in the row, which ought to have been kept clean and cultivated.
I began by deepening the garden soil wherever a spade could be put in. I hired a man for this purpose, and paid him ten dollars for the job, including the hauling and digging in of the great pile of manure I had found in the barnyard, and the clearing up of things generally. I would have laid out fifty dollars in manure, if the money could have been spared; but what I did afforded an excellent return. My wife and eldest daughter, Kate, then in her eighteenth year, did all the planting. I spent five dollars in buying for them a complete outfit of hoes, rakes, and trowels for garden use, lightly made on purpose for female handling, with a neat little wheelbarrow to hold the weeds and litter which I felt pretty sure would have to be hoed up and trundled away before the season was over.
They took to the garden manfully. I kept their hoes constantly sharpened with a file, and they declared it was only pastime to wage warfare on the weeds with weapons so keen. Now and then one of the boys went in to give them a lift; and when a new vegetable bed was to be planted, it was dug up and made ready for them. But the great bulk of all other work was done by themselves.
Never has either of them enjoyed health so robust, or appetites so wholesome. As a whole year’s crop of weeds had gone to seed, they had millions of the enemy to contend with, just as I had anticipated. I did not volunteer discouragements by repeating to them the old English formula, that
“One year’s seeding
Makes seven years’ weeding,”
but commended their industry, exhorted them to persevere, and was lavish in my admiration of the handsome style in which they kept the grounds. I infused into their minds a perfect hatred of the whole tribe of weeds, enjoined it upon them not to let a single one escape and go to seed, and promised them that if they thus exterminated all, the next year’s weeding would be mere recreation.
I will say for them, that all our visitors from the city were surprised at seeing the garden so free from weeds, while they did not fail to notice that most of the vegetables were extremely thrifty. They did not know that in gardens where the weeds thrive undisturbed, the vegetables never do. As to the neighbors, they came in occasionally to see what the women were doing, but shook their heads when they saw they were merely hoeing up weeds—said that weeds did no harm, and they might as well attempt to kill all the flies—they had been brought up among weeds, knew all about them, and “it was no use trying to get rid of them.”
But the work of weeding kept on through the whole season, and as a consequence, the ground about the vegetables was kept constantly stirred. The result of this thorough culture was, that nearly every thing seemed to feel it, and the growth was prodigious, far exceeding what the family could consume. We had every thing we needed, and in far greater abundance than we ever had in the city. I am satisfied this profusion of vegetables lessened the consumption of meat in the family one-half. Indeed, it was such, that my wife suggested that the garden had so much more in it than we required, that perhaps it would be as well to send the surplus to the store where we usually bought our groceries, to be there sold for our benefit.
The town within half a mile of us contained some five thousand inhabitants, among whom there was a daily demand for vegetables. I took my wife’s advice, and from time to time gathered such as she directed, for she and Kate were sole mistresses of the garden, and sent them to the store. They kept a regular book-account of these consignments, and when we came to settle up with the storekeeper at the year’s end, were surprised to find that he had eighty dollars to our credit. But this was not all from vegetables—a good deal of it came from the fruit-trees.
After using in the family great quantities of fine peaches from the ten garden-trees, certainly three times as many as we could ever afford to buy when in the city, the rest went to the store. The trees had been so hackled by the worms that they did not bear full crops, yet the yield was considerable. Then there were quantities of spare currants, gooseberries, and several bushels of common blue plums, which the curculio does not sting. When my wife discovered there was so ready a market at our own door, she suffered nothing to go to waste. It was a new feature in her experience—every thing seemed to sell. Whenever she needed a new dress for herself or any of the children, all she had to do was to go to the store, get it, and have it charged against her garden fund. I confess that her success greatly exceeded my expectations.