It rarely happens that there is much selection to be made in soils as we find them in nature, for gardening purposes, unless particular attention is given to the subject in choosing a site for a new dwelling. Generally, we have to take the land as we find it. Unless, therefore, we happen to find it just right, we should endeavor to improve it in the best manner. The principal means for making a perfect garden soil, are draining, trenching, and manuring. Now, let none be startled at the outset with the fear of cost, in thus preparing the soil. The entire expense of preparing half an acre would not, in general, amount to more than the amount saved in a single year in the purchase of food for family supplies, by the fine and abundant vegetables afforded. If the owner cannot possibly prepare his half or quarter acre of land properly, then let him occupy the ground with something else than garden crops, and take only a single square rod (if he cannot attend to more), and give this the most perfect preparation. A square rod of rich, luxuriant vegetables, will be found more valuable than eighty rods, or half an acre of scant, dwarfed, and stringy growth, which no one will wish to eat; while the extra cost and labor spent on the eighty rods in seeds, digging, and hoeing, would have been more than sufficient to prepare the smaller plot in the most complete manner. Let the determination be made, therefore, at the commencement, to take no more land than can be properly prepared, and in the most thorough manner.
The ten peach-trees in the garden were thoroughly manured by digging in around them all the coal ashes made during the winter, first sifting them well. No stable manure was added, as it promotes too rank and watery a growth in the peach, while ashes of any kind are what this fruit most delights in. Then the butts were examined for worms, but the last year’s application of tar had kept off the fly, and the old ravages of the enemy were found to be nearly healed over by the growth of new bark. A fresh coating of tar was applied, and thus every thing was made safe.
As the season advanced, my wife and daughter took charge of the garden, as usual, and with high hopes of greater success than ever. They had had one year’s experience, while now the ground was in far better condition. Moreover, they seemed to have forgotten all about the weeds, as in calculating their prospective profits they did not mention them even once. I was careful not to do so, though I had my own suspicions on the subject. When the planting had been done, and things went on growing finely as the season advanced, they were suddenly reminded of their ancient enemy. The trenching and manuring had done as much for the weeds as for the vegetables. Why should they not? In her innocency, Kate thought the weeds should all have been buried in the trenches, as if their seeds had been deposited exclusively on the surface. But they grew more rampantly than ever during the entire season, and to my mind they seemed to be in greater quantity. But the fact worked no discouragement to either wife or daughter. They waged against them the same resolute warfare, early, late, and in the noonday sun, until Kate, in spite of a capacious sun-bonnet, became a nut-brown maid. Not a weed was permitted to flourish to maturity.
The careful culture of the garden this year gave them even a better reward than it had done the year before. The failures of the last season were all avoided. Several kinds of seeds were soaked before being planted, which prevented failure and secured a quicker growth. In addition to this, they raised a greater variety of vegetables expressly for the store; and with some, such as radishes and beets, they were particularly lucky, and realized high prices for all they had to dispose of. Then the high manuring and extra care bestowed upon the asparagus were apparent in the quick and vigorous shooting up of thick and tender roots, far more than we could consume, and so superior to any others that were taken to the store, that they sold rapidly at city prices. Thus they began to make sales earlier in the season, while their crops were far more abundant. The trenching and manuring was evidently a paying investment. In addition to all this, the season proved to be a good one for fruit. The garden trees bore abundantly. My ten peach-trees had by this time been rejuvenated, and were loaded with fruit. When as large as hickory nuts, I began the operation of removing all the smallest, and of thinning out unsparingly wherever they were excessively crowded. After going over five trees, I brought a bucketful of the expurgated peaches to my wife for exhibition. She seemed panic-stricken at the sight—protested that we should have no peaches that season, if I went on at that rate—besought me to remember my peculiar weakness for pies—and pleaded so eloquently that the other trees should not be stripped, as to induce me, much against my judgment, to suspend my ravages. Thus five had been thinned and five left untouched.
At the moment, I regretted her interference, but as compliance with her wishes always brought to me its own gratification, if not in one way, then in some other, so it did in this instance. In the first place, the peaches on the five denuded trees grew prodigiously larger and finer than those on the other five. I gathered them carefully and sent them to the city, where they brought me $41 clear of expenses, while the fruit from the other trees, sent to market with similar care, netted only $17, and those used in the family from the same trees, estimated at the same rates, were worth $9, making, on those five, a difference of $15 in favor of thinning. Thus, the ten produced $58; but if all had been thinned, the product would have been $82.
This unexpected result satisfied my wife ever afterwards that it was quality, and not mere quantity, that the market wanted. Her own garden sales would have convinced her of this, had she observed them closely; but having overlooked results there, it required an illustration too striking to be gainsayed, and this the peach-trees furnished. All these figures appear in Kate’s account-book. I had provided her with one expressly for the garden operations, a nice gold pen, and every other possible convenience for making entries at the moment any transaction occurred. I had also taught her the simplest form for keeping her accounts, and caused her to keep a pass-book with the store, in which every consignment should be entered, so that her book and the storekeeper’s should be a check on errors that might be found in either. She thus became extremely expert at her accounts, and as she took especial interest in the matter, could tell from memory, at the week’s end, how many dollars’ worth of produce she had sold. I found the amount running up quite hopefully as the season advanced, and when it had closed, she announced the total to be $63 without the peaches, or $121 by including them. But she had paid some money for seeds; as an offset to which, no cash had been expended in digging, as Dick and myself had done it all.
So much for the garden this year. On my nine acres of ploughed land there was plenty of work to be done. Our old enemy, the weeds, did not seem to have diminished in number, notwithstanding our slaughter the previous year. They came up as thick and vigorous as ever, and required quite as much labor to master them, as the hoe was oftener required among the rows of raspberries and strawberries. My dogged fellow, Dick, took this matter with perfect unconcern—said he knew it would be so, and that I would find the weeds could not be killed—but he might as well work among them as at any thing else. I ceased to argue with him on the subject, and as I had full faith in coming out right in the end, was content to silently bide my time.
This year I planted an acre with tomatoes, having raised abundance of fine plants in a hotbed, as well as egg-plants for the garden. I set them out in rows, three and one-half feet apart each way, and manured them well, twice as heavily as many of my neighbors did. This gave me 3,760 plants to the acre. The product was almost incredible, and amounted to 501 bushels, or about five quarts a hill, a far better yield than I had had the first year. From some hills as many as ten quarts each were gathered. I managed to get twenty baskets into New York market among the very first of the season, where they netted me $60. The next twenty netted $25, the next twenty only $15, as numerous competitors came in, and the next thirty cleared no more. After that the usual glut came on, and down went the price to twenty and even fifteen cents. But at twenty and twenty-five I continued to forward to Philadelphia, where they paid better than to let them rot on the ground. From 200 baskets at these low prices I netted $35. Then, in the height of the season, all picking was suspended, except for the pigs, who thus had any quantity they could consume. But the glut gradually subsided as tomatoes perished on the vines, and the price again rose in market to twenty-five cents, then to fifty, then to a dollar, and upwards. But my single acre afforded me but few at the close of the season. I did not manage to realize $40 from the fag-end of the year, making a total net yield of $190.
Others near me, older hands at the business, did much better, but I thought this well enough. I would prefer raising tomatoes at 37 cents a bushel to potatoes at 75. The amount realized from an acre far exceeds that of potatoes. A smart man will gather from sixty to seventy bushels a day. The expense of cultivating, using plenty of manure, is about $60 per acre, and the gross yield may be safely calculated $250, leaving about $200 sure surplus. If it were not for the sudden and tremendous fall in prices to which tomatoes are subject soon after they come into market, growers might become rich in a few years.
The other acre was occupied with corn, roots, and cabbage, for winter feeding, with potatoes for family use. Turnips were sowed wherever room could be found for them, and no spot about the farm was permitted to remain idle. A hill of corn, a cabbage, a pumpkin-vine, or whatever else was suited to it, was planted. But of potatoes we did sell enough to amount to $24. On the acre occupied with blackberries, early cabbages were planted to the number of 4,000. Many of these, of course, were small and not marketable, though well manured and carefully attended. But all such were very acceptable in the barnyard and pig-pen. Of sound cabbages I sold 3,120, at an average of two and one-quarter cents, amounting to $70.20. I cannot tell how it was, but other persons close to me raised larger and better heads, and of course realized better prices. But I had no reason to complain.