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Requisites Of The
Home Vegetable Garden
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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.
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