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.
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