The home garden should not be too large—a plot forty by eighty feet will grow all the summer and winter vegetables a small family can make use of and a considerable surplus for sale, especially is this the case where the corn and vines are planted outside the garden proper. Potatoes, too, are excluded from this estimate, though a few rows of early potatoes may find room available.

The accompanying planting table, while intended to be merely suggestive will be of use as indicating the amount of room required for the several varieties of plants and a convenient arrangement. The amount to be grown of any one variety however, must be decided by the individual gardener and it will be time well spent to make a diagram for one's self, based on the amount of various vegetables that experience shows to be needed. To those vegetables to which the family are most addicted should always be added a few that are grown with the occasional guest in mind and the few things that one likes to try from season to season, and that add zest to gardening but should never be allowed to occupy space needed for more standard sorts.

PLANTING-TABLE FOR A SMALL GARDEN APPROXIMATELY FORTY BY EIGHTY FEET

Lettuce—May King, 1 row. Transplant from hotbed to 9 in. apart 
Onions—Transplanted seedlings of Prizetaker, Ailsa Craig
or Silver Skin, 1 in.		1 oz.
Parsley—Dwarf Perfection. Transplant to 9 in. apart1 Pkt.
Endive—One row, Giant Fringed. Transplant to 9 in.
apart		1 Pkt.
Beets—Two rows, Crosby's Egyptian. Thin to 3 in.2 oz.
Carrots—Two rows, Danvers Half Long. Thin to 3 in.1 oz.
Parsnips—Large Sugar or Hollow Crown. Two rows.
Thin to 3 in.		½ oz.
Salsify—Two rows, smooth, Mammoth Sandwich Island.
Thin to 3 in.		1 oz
Spinach—One row, All Season. Thin to 8 in.½ oz.
Lima Beans—Fordhook Bush. Thin to 6 in.2 lb.
String Beans—Wardwell's Kidney Wax, or Navy Beans.
Two rows		2 lb.
Peas—Double rows, Senator, Gradus, Telephone. On wire
netting		2 lb.
Peppers—One row, Ruby Giant, Bull Nose, or Pimento.
12 in. apart		1 Pkt.
Bush Muskmelons—Three ft. apart1 Pkt.
Okra—Perkins' Long Pod. Half row, thin to 1 foot½ lb.
Eggplant—Black Beauty. 18 in.1 Pkt.
Early Potatoes—Dreer's Perfection, Early Ohio. Fifteen
inches apart		1 Pkt.
Cauliflower—Early Snowball. Twenty in. apart1 Pkt.
Cauliflower—Dry Weather. Twenty in. apart1 Pkt.
Cabbage—Late Flat Dutch. 2 ft. apart1 Pkt.
Squash—Delicious, Burbank's Hubbard. 6 ft. apart each
way		1 oz.

CHAPTER II
HOTBEDS, COLD FRAMES AND FLATS

So important is the preparatory work performed by a well started and conducted hotbed that its use cannot be too insistently recommended. The smallest, least ambitious home garden is dependent upon the use of artificial heat in the starting of such plants as cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes and the like, either in hotbeds on the home grounds, flats in the windows or plants grown in commercial greenhouses; these, owing to the long season required to bring them into bearing, cannot be started in the open ground; especially is this true of such heat loving things as peppers and tomatoes.

Owing to the quite general practice of buying these plants of the commercial gardeners or florists a much smaller area of ground is devoted to their growth than would be the case were the plants grown in one's own hotbeds where the initial cost would have been that of a few packets of seeds. Purchased plants are by no means immune from late frosts or the assaults of cut worms and not infrequently demand successive replantings before a satisfactory stand is secured. With a well stocked hotbed this does not spell so great a disaster, as only the labor of resetting is demanded and this is not of much moment as the lines and points of setting are already laid down and the hills of tomatoes, eggplants and peppers already supplied with their spade full of manure. In a generous sized garden where perhaps a hundred plants of a kind are grown the saving in the cost of plants will cover the construction and maintenance of an ordinary hotbed and the cost of a bed of the best concrete construction, which will last almost a lifetime, will be covered in a reasonably short time.

There is nothing about the construction or care of a hotbed that offers any obstacles to its possession and I have about come to the conclusion that the only reason more gardeners do not have them is because they cannot borrow them; they are the only thing about a garden that some one can't and doesn't borrow and if some one would invent a portable one it would undoubtedly become popular.