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I mentioned some time ago that the wife of the
former owner of this place had left it with a world of regrets. She had
been passionately fond of the garden which now fell to us. As daylight can
be seen through very small holes, so little things will illustrate a
person's character. Indeed, character consists in little acts, and
honorably performed; daily life being the quarry from which we build it up
and rough-hew the habits that form it. The garden she had prepared, and
cultivated for several years, doing much of the work of planting,
watching, watering, and training with her own hands, bore honorable
testimony to the goodness of hers. She had filled it with the choicest
fruit-trees, most of which were now in full bearing. There was abundance
of all the usual garden fruits, currants, gooseberries, grapes, and an
ample asparagus bed. It was laid out with taste, convenience, and
liberality. Flowers, of course, had not been omitted by such a woman. Her
vocation had evidently been something beyond that of merely cooking her
husband's dinners. But her garden bore marks of long abandonment. Great
weeds were rioting in the borders, grass had
taken foothold in the alleys, and it stood in need of a new mistress to
work up into prontable use the store of riches it contained. It struck me
that if one woman could establish a garden like this.
I could find another on my own premises to manage it.
After I had got through with the various plantings
of my standard fruits—indeed, while much of it was going on—I took
resolute hold of the garden. It was large enough to provide vegetables for
three families. I meant to make it sure for one. With all the lights and
improvements of modern times, and they are many, three-fourths of the farm
gardens in our country are still a disgrace to our husbandry. As a rule,
the most easily raised vegetables are not to be found in them; and the
small fruits, with the exception of currants and gooseberries, are
universally neglected. Many of our farmers have never tasted an early
York cabbage. If they get cabbages or potatoes by August, they think they
are doing pretty well. They do not understand the simple mysteries of a
hot-bed, and so force nothing. Now, with this article, which need not cost
five dollars, and which a boy of ten years can manage, you can have
cabbages and potatoes in June, and beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and
squashes, and a host of other delicious vegetables, a little later.
By selecting your seed, you can have salad, green
peas, onions, and beets by the last of June, or before, without any
forcing. A good asparagus bed, covering two square rods of ground, is a
luxury that no farmer should be without. It will
give him a palatable dish, green and succulent from the bosom of the
earth every day, from May to July. A good variety of vegetables is within
the reach of every farmer the year round. They are not only an important
means of supporting the family, paying at least one-half the table
expenses, but they are greatly conducive to health. They relieve the
terrible monotony of salt junk, and in the warm season prevent the fevers
and bowel complaints so often induced by too much animal food.
Neglect is thus too much the rule. A row of
currants, for example, is planted in a garden. It will indeed bear well
with neglect; but an annual manuring and thinning out of old wood, would
at least triple the size of the fruit, and improve its quality. The row of
currants will furnish a daily supply of refreshing fruit to the table for
months together. Why should its culture then be totally neglected, when a
row of corn by its side of equal length, which will supply only a single
feeding to a pen of hogs, is most carefully manured, watched, ploughed,
and hoed? I have sometimes seen farmers who, after expending large sums in
establishing a young orchard of trees, would destroy one-half by choking
them with a crop of oats or clover, because they could not afford to lose
the use of the small strip of land a few feet wide in the row, which ought
to have been kept clean and cultivated.
I began by
deepening the garden soil wherever a spade could be put in. I hired a man
for this purpose,
and paid him ten dollars for the job, including the hauling and digging in
of the great pile of manure I had found in the barnyard, and the clearing
up of things generally. I would have laid out fifty dollars in manure, if
the money could have been spared; but what I did afforded an excellent
return. My wife and eldest daughter, Kate, then in her eighteenth year,
did all the planting. I spent five dollars in buying for them a complete
outfit of hoes, rakes, and trowels for garden use, lightly made on purpose
for female handling, with a neat little wheelbarrow to hold the weeds and
litter which I felt pretty sure would have to be hoed up and trundled away
before the season was over.
They took to the garden manfully. I kept their hoes
constantly sharpened with a file, and they declared it was only pastime
to wage warfare on the weeds with weapons so keen. Now and then one of the
boys went in to give them a lift; and when a new vegetable bed was to be
planted, it was dug up and made ready for them. But the great bulk of all
other work was done by themselves.
Never has either of them enjoyed health so robust,
or appetites so wholesome. As a whole year's crop of weeds had gone to
seed, they had millions of the enemy to contend with, just as I had
anticipated. I did not volunteer discouragements by repeating to them the
old English formula, that
"One year's seeding
Makes seven years' weeding,"
but commended their industry, exhorted them to
persevere, and was lavish in my admiration of the handsome style in which
they kept the grounds. I infused into their minds a perfect hatred of the
whole tribe of weeds, enjoined it upon them not to let a single one escape
and go to seed, and promised them that if they thus exterminated all, the
next year's weeding would be mere recreation.
I will say for them, that all our visitors from the
city were surprised at seeing the garden so free from weeds, while they
did not fail to notice that most of the vegetables were extremely
thrifty. They did not know that in gardens where the weeds thrive
undisturbed, the vegetables never do. As to the neighbors, they came in
occasionally to see what the women were doing, but shook their heads when
they saw they were merely hoeing up weeds—said that weeds did no harm, and
they might as well attempt to kill all the flies—they had been brought up
among weeds, knew all about them, and "it was no use trying to get rid of
them."
But the work of weeding kept on through the whole
season, and as a consequence, the ground about the vegetables was kept
constantly stirred. The result of this thorough culture was, that nearly
everything seemed to feel it, and the growth was prodigious, far
exceeding what the family could consume. We had everything we needed, and
in far greater abundance than we ever had in the city. I am satisfied this
profusion of vegetables lessened the consumption of meat in the family
one-half. Indeed, it was such, that my wife
suggested that the garden had so much more in it than we required, that
perhaps it would be as well to send the surplus to the store where we
usually bought our groceries, to be there sold for our benefit.
The town within half a mile of us contained some
five thousand inhabitants, among whom there was a daily demand for
vegetables. I took my wife's advice, and from time to time gathered such
as she directed, for she and Kate were sole mistresses of the garden, and
sent them to the store. They kept a regular book account of these
consignments, and when we came to settle up with the storekeeper at the
year's end, were surprised to find that he had eighty dollars to our
credit. But this was not all from vegetables—a good deal of it came from
the fruit trees.
After using in the family great quantities of fine
peaches from the ten garden-trees, certainly three times as many as we
could ever afford to buy when in the city, the rest went to the store. The
trees had been so hackled by the worms that they did not bear full crops,
yet the yield was considerable. Then there were quantities of spare
currants, gooseberries, and several bushels of common blue plums, which
the curculio does not sting. When my wife discovered there was so ready a
market at our own door, she suffered nothing to go to waste. It was a new
feature in her experience—everything seemed to sell. Whenever she needed a
new dress for herself or any of the children, all she had to do
was to go to the store, get it, and have it charged against her
garden fund. I confess that her success greatly exceeded my expectations.
Let me now put in a word as to the cause of this
success with our garden. It was not owing to our knowledge of gardening,
for we made many blunders not here recorded, and lost crops of two or
three different things in consequence. Neither
was it owing to excessive richness of the ground. But I lay it to the
unsparing warfare kept up upon the weeds, which thus prevented their
running away with the nourishment intended for the plants, and kept the
ground constantly stirred up and thoroughly pulverized. I have sometimes
thought one good stirring up, whether with the hoe, the rake, or the
cultivator, was as beneficial as a good shower.
When vegetables begin to look parched and
the ground becomes dry, some gardeners think they must commence the use of
the watering-pot. This practice, to a certain extent, and under some
circumstances, may perhaps be proper, but as a general rule it is
incorrect. The same time spent in hoeing, frequently stirring the earth
about vegetables, is far preferable. When watering has once commenced it
must be continued, must be followed up, else you have done mischief
instead of good; as, after watering a few times, and then omitting it,
the ground will bake harder than if nothing had been done to it. Not so
with hoeing or raking. The more you stir the ground about vegetables, the
better they are off; and
whenever you stop hoeing, no damage is
done, as in watering.
Vegetables will improve more rapidly, be more healthy, and in better
condition at maturity, by frequent hoeing than by frequent watering. This
result is very easily shown by experiment. Just notice, after a dewy
night, the difference between ground lately and often stirred, and that
which has lain unmoved for a long time. Or take two cabbage plants under
similar circumstances; water one and stir the other just as often,
stirring the earth about it carefully and thoroughly, and see which will
distance the other in growth.
There are secrets about
this stirring of the earth which chemists and horticulturists would do
well to study with the utmost scrutiny and care. Soil cultivated in the
spring, and then neglected, soon settles together. The surface becomes
hard, the particles cohere, they attract little or no moisture, and from
such a surface even the rain slides off, apperently doing little good. But
let this surface be thoroughly pulverized, though it be done merely with
an iron rake, and only a few inches in depth, and a new life is infused
into it. The surface becomes friable and soft, the moisture of the
particles again becomes active, attracting and being attracted, each
seeming to be crying to his neighbor, "Hand over, hand over—more drink,
more drink." Why this elaboration should grow less and less, till in a
comparatively short time it should seem almost to cease, is a question of
very difficult solution; though the varying compositions of soils has
doubtless something to do with the matter.
But let the stirring be
carefully repeated, and all is life again. Particles attract moisture from
the atmosphere, hand it to each other, down it goes to the roots of
vegetables, the little suction fibres drink it in; and though we cannot
see these busy operations, yet we perceive their healthy effects in the
pushing up of vegetables above the surface. The hoe is better than the
water-pot. My garden is a signal illustration of the fact.
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