REQUISITES OF THE HOME
VEGETABLE GARDEN
In deciding upon the site for the home vegetable garden it
is well to dispose once and for all of the old idea that the
garden "patch" must be an ugly spot in the home
surroundings. If thoughtfully planned, carefully planted and
thoroughly cared for, it may be made a beautiful and
harmonious feature of the general scheme, lending a touch of
comfortable homeliness that no shrubs, borders, or beds can
ever produce.
With this fact in mind we will not feel restricted to any
part of the premises merely because it is out of sight
behind the barn or garage. In the average moderate-sized
place there will not be much choice as to land. It will be
necessary to take what is to be had and then do the very
best that can
be done with it. But there will probably be a good deal of
choice as to, first, exposure, and second, convenience.
Other things being equal, select a spot near at hand, easy
of access. It may seem that a difference of only a few
hundred yards will mean nothing, but if one is depending
largely upon spare moments for working in and for watching
the garden and in the growing of many vegetables the latter
is almost as important as the former this matter of
convenient access will be of much greater importance than is
likely to be at first recognized. Not until you have had to
make a dozen time-wasting trips for forgotten seeds or
tools, or gotten your feet soaking wet by going
out through the dew-drenched grass, will you realize fully
what this may mean.
Exposure.
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But the thing of first importance to consider in picking out
the spot that is to yield you happiness and delicious
vegetables all summer, or even for many years, is the
exposure. Pick out the "earliest" spot you can find a plot
sloping a little to the south or east, that seems to catch
sunshine early and hold it late, and that seems to be out of
the direct path of the chilling north and northeast winds.
If a building, or even an old fence, protects it from this
direction, your garden will be helped along wonderfully, for
an early start is a great big factor toward success. If it
is not already protected, a board fence, or a hedge of some
low-growing shrubs or young evergreens, will add very
greatly to its usefulness. The importance of having such a
protection or
shelter is altogether underestimated by the amateur.
The soil.
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The chances are that you will not find a spot of ideal
garden soil ready for use anywhere upon your place. But all
except the very worst of soils can be brought up to a very
high degree of productiveness especially such small areas as
home vegetable gardens require. Large tracts of soil that
are almost pure sand, and others so heavy and mucky that for
centuries they lay uncultivated, have frequently been
brought, in the course of only a few years, to where they
yield annually tremendous crops on a commercial basis. So do
not be discouraged about your soil. Proper treatment of it
is much more important, and a garden- patch of average
run-down, or "never-brought-up" soil will produce much more
for the energetic and careful gardener than the richest spot
will grow under average methods of cultivation.
The ideal garden soil is a "rich, sandy loam." And the fact
cannot be overemphasized that such soils usually are made,
not found. Let us analyze that description a bit, for right
here we come to the first of the four all-important factors
of gardening food. The others are cultivation, moisture and
temperature. "Rich" in the gardener's vocabulary means full
of plant food; more than that and this is a point of vital
importance it means full of plant food ready to be used at
once, all prepared and spread out on the garden table, or
rather in it, where growing things can at once make use of
it; or what we term, in one word, "available" plant food.
Practically no soils in long- inhabited communities remain
naturally rich enough to produce big crops. They are made
rich, or kept rich, in two ways; first, by cultivation,
which helps to change the raw plant food stored in the soil
into available forms; and second, by manuring or adding
plant food to the soil from outside sources.
"Sandy" in the sense here used, means a soil containing
enough particles of sand so that water will pass through it
without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days after a rain;
"light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under
ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall apart readily
after being pressed in the hand. It is not necessary that
the soil be sandy in appearance, but it should be friable.
"Loam: a rich, friable soil," says Webster. That hardly
covers it, but it does describe it. It is soil in which the
sand and clay are in proper proportions, so that neither
greatly predominate, and usually dark in color, from
cultivation and enrichment. Such a soil, even to the
untrained eye, just naturally looks as if it would grow
things. It is remarkable how quickly the whole physical
appearance of a piece of well cultivated ground will change.
An instance came under my notice last fall in one of my
fields, where a strip containing an acre had been two years
in onions, and a little piece jutting off from the middle of
this had been prepared for them just one season. The rest
had not received any extra manuring or cultivation. When the
field was plowed up in the fall,
all three sections were as distinctly noticeable as though
separated by a fence. And I know that next spring's crop of
rye, before it is plowed under, will show the lines of
demarcation just as plainly.
