If you will keep on hand, ready for instant use, a good hand-sprayer and a modern powder gun, a few covered boxes, tobacco dust, arsenate of lead and materials for kerosene emulsion and Bordeaux mixture, and are not afraid to resort to hand-picking when necessary, you will be able to cope with all the plant enemies you are likely to encounter. The slight expense necessary—considering that the two implements mentioned will last for years with a little care—will pay as handsome a dividend as any garden investment you can make.
CHAPTER XIV
HARVESTING AND STORING
It is a very common thing to allow the garden vegetables not used to rot on the ground, or in it. There is a great deal of unnecessary waste in this respect, for a great many of the things so neglected may just as well be carried into winter, and will pay a very handsome dividend for the slight trouble of gathering and storing them.
A good frost-proof, cool cellar is the best and most convenient place in which to store the surplus product of the home garden. But, lacking this, a room partitioned off in the furnace cellar and well ventilated, or a small empty room, preferably on the north side of the house, that can be kept below forty degrees most of the time, will serve excellently. Or, some of the most bulky vegetables, such as cabbage and the root crops, may be stored in a prepared pit made in the garden itself.
As it is essential that such a pit be properly constructed, I shall describe one with sufficient detail to enable the home gardener readily to construct it. Select a spot where water will not stand. Put the vegetables in a triangular-shaped pile, the base three or four feet wide, and as long as required. Separate the different vegetables in this pile by stakes about two feet higher than the top of the pile, and label them. Then cover with a layer of clean straw or bog hay, and over this four inches of soil, dug up three feet back from the edges of the pile. This work must be done late in the fall, as nearly as one can judge just before lasting freezing begins, and preferably on a cold morning when the ground is just beginning to freeze; the object being to freeze the partly earth covering at once, so that it will not be washed or blown off. The vegetables must be perfectly dry when stored; dig them a week or so previous and keep them in an airy shed. As soon as this first layer of earth is partly frozen, but before it freezes through, put on another thick layer of straw or hay and cover with twelve inches of earth, keeping the pile as steep as possible; a slightly clayey soil, that may be beaten down firmly into shape with a spade, being best. The pile should be made where it will be sheltered from the sun as much as possible, such as on the north side of a building. The disadvantage of the plan is, of course, that the vegetables cannot be got at until the pile is opened up, in early spring, or late if desired. Its two advantages are that the vegetables stored will be kept in better condition than in any cellar, and that cellar or house room will be saved.
For storing small quantities of the roots, such as carrots or beets, they are usually packed in boxes or barrels and covered in with clean sand. Where an upstairs room has to be used, swamp or sphagnum moss may replace the sand. It makes an ideal packing medium, as it is much lighter and cleaner than the sand. In many localities it may be had for the gathering; in others one may get it from a florist.
In storing vegetables of any kind, and by whatever method, see to it that:
(1) They are always clean, dry and sound. The smallest spot or bruise is a danger center, which may spread destruction to the lot.
(2) That the temperature, whatever required—in most cases 33-38 degrees being best—is kept as even as possible.