Home Vegetable Gardening, by F. F. Rockwell

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Title: Home Vegetable Gardening

       A Complete And Practical Guide To The Planting And Care Of All

       Vegetables, Fruits And Berries Worth Growing For Home Use

Author: F. F. Rockwell

Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7123]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on March 12, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME VEGETABLE GARDENING ***

Produced by Michelle Shephard, Tiffany Vergon, Juliet Sutherland,

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HOME VEGETABLE GARDENING

A COMPLETE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE

TO THE PLANTING AND CARE OF ALL

VEGETABLES, FRUITS AND BERRIES

WORTH GROWING FOR HOME USE

BY

F. F. ROCKWELL

Author of _Around the Year in the Garden_,

_Gardening Indoors and Under Glass_,

_The Key to the Land,_ etc., etc.

PREFACE

With some, the home vegetable garden is a hobby; with others,

especially in these days of high prices, a great help. There are many

in both classes whose experience in gardening has been restricted

within very narrow bounds, and whose present spare time for gardening

is limited. It is as "first aid" to such persons, who want to do

practical, efficient gardening, and do it with the least possible fuss

and loss of time, that this book is written. In his own experience the

author has found that garden books, while seldom lacking in

information, often do not present it in the clearest possible way. It

has been his aim to make the present volume first of all practical, and

in addition to that, though comprehensive, yet simple and concise. If

it helps to make the way of the home gardener more clear and definite,

its purpose will have been accomplished.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

    I INTRODUCTION

   II WHY YOU SHOULD GARDEN

  III REQUISITES OF THE HOME VEGETABLE GARDEN

   IV THE PLANTING PLAN

    V IMPLEMENTS AND THEIR USES

   VI MANURES AND FERTILIZERS

  VII THE SOIL AND ITS PREPARATION

PART TWO--VEGETABLES

 VIII STARTING THE PLANTS

   IX SOWING AND PLANTING

    X THE CULTIVATION OF VEGETABLES

   XI THE VEGETABLES AND THEIR SPECIAL NEEDS

  XII BEST VARIETIES OF THE GARDEN VEGETABLES

 XIII INSECTS AND DISEASE, AND METHODS OF FIGHTING THEM

  XIV HARVESTING AND STORING

PART THREE--FRUITS

   XV THE VARIETIES OF POME AND STONE FRUITS

  XVI PLANTING; CULTIVATION; FILLER CROPS

 XVII PRUNING, SPRAYING, HARVESTING

XVIII BERRIES AND SMALL FRUITS

  XIX A CALENDAR OF OPERATIONS

   XX CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Formerly it was the custom for gardeners to invest their labors and

achievements with a mystery and secrecy which might well have

discouraged any amateur from trespassing upon such difficult ground.

"Trade secrets" in either flower or vegetable growing were acquired by

the apprentice only through practice and observation, and in turn

jealously guarded by him until passed on to some younger brother in the

profession. Every garden operation was made to seem a wonderful and

difficult undertaking. Now, all that has changed. In fact the pendulum

has swung, as it usually does, to the other extreme. Often, if you are

a beginner, you have been flatteringly told in print that you could

from the beginning do just as well as the experienced gardener.

My garden friend, it cannot, as a usual thing, be done. Of course, it

may happen and sometimes does. You _might_, being a trusting lamb,

go down into Wall Street with $10,000 [Ed. Note: all monetary values

throughout the book are 1911 values] and make a fortune. You know that

you would not be likely to; the chances are very much against you. This

garden business is a matter of common sense; and the man, or the woman,

who has learned by experience how to do a thing, whether it is

cornering the market or growing cabbages, naturally does it better than

the one who has not. Do not expect the impossible. If you do, read a

poultry advertisement and go into the hen business instead of trying to

garden. I _have_ grown pumpkins that necessitated the tearing down

of the fence in order to get them out of the lot, and sometimes, though

not frequently, have had to use the axe to cut through a stalk of

asparagus, but I never "made $17,000 in ten months from an eggplant in

a city back-yard." No, if you are going to take up gardening, you will

have to work, and you will have a great many disappointments. All that

I, or anyone else, could put between the two covers of a book will not

make a gardener of you. It must be learned through the fingers, and

back, too, as well as from the printed page. But, after all, the

greatest reward for your efforts will be the work itself; and unless

you love the work, or have a feeling that you will love it, probably

the best way for you, is to stick to the grocer for your garden.

Most things, in the course of development, change from the simple to

the complex. The art of gardening has in many ways been an exception to

the rule. The methods of culture used for many crops are more simple

than those in vogue a generation ago. The last fifty years has seen

also a tremendous advance in the varieties of vegetables, and the

strange thing is that in many instances the new and better sorts are

more easily and quickly grown than those they have replaced. The new

lima beans are an instance of what is meant. While limas have always

been appreciated as one of the most delicious of vegetables, in many

sections they could never be successfully grown, because of their

aversion to dampness and cold, and of the long season required to

mature them. The newer sorts are not only larger and better, but

hardier and earlier; and the bush forms have made them still more

generally available.

Knowledge on the subject of gardening is also more widely diffused than

ever before, and the science of photography has helped wonderfully in

telling the newcomer how to do things. It has also lent an impetus and

furnished an inspiration which words alone could never have done. If

one were to attempt to read all the gardening instructions and

suggestions being published, he would have no time left to practice

gardening at all. Why then, the reader may ask at this point, another

garden book? It is a pertinent question, and it is right that an answer

be expected in advance. The reason, then, is this: while there are

garden books in plenty, most of them pay more attention to the

"content" than to the form in which it is laid before the prospective

gardener. The material is often presented as an accumulation of detail,

instead of by a systematic and constructive plan which will take the

reader step by step through the work to be done, and make clear

constantly both the principles and the practice of garden making and

management, and at the same time avoid every digression unnecessary

from the practical point of view. Other books again, are either so

elementary as to be of little use where gardening is done without

gloves, or too elaborate, however accurate and worthy in other

respects, for an every-day working manual. The author feels, therefore,

that there is a distinct field for the present book.

And, while I still have the reader by the "introduction" buttonhole, I

want to make a suggestion or two about using a book like this. Do not,

on the one hand, read it through and then put it away with the

dictionary and the family Bible, and trust to memory for the

instruction it may give; do not, on the other hand, wait until you

think it is time to plant a thing, and then go and look it up. For

instance, do not, about the middle of May, begin investigating how many

onion seeds to put in a hill; you will find out that they should have

been put in, in drills, six weeks before. Read the whole book through

carefully at your first opportunity, make a list of the things you

should do for your own vegetable garden, and put opposite them the

proper dates for your own vicinity. Keep this available, as a working

guide, and refer to special matters as you get to them.

Do not feel discouraged that you cannot be promised immediate success

at the start. I know from personal experience and from the experience

of others that "book-gardening" is a practical thing. If you do your

work carefully and thoroughly, you may be confident that a very great

measure of success will reward the efforts of your first garden season.

And I know too, that you will find it the most entrancing game you ever

played.

Good luck to you!

CHAPTER II

WHY YOU SHOULD GARDEN

There are more reasons to-day than ever before why the owner of a small

place should have his, or her, own vegetable garden. The days of home

weaving, home cheese-making, home meat-packing, are gone. With a

thousand and one other things that used to be made or done at home,

they have left the fireside and followed the factory chimney. These

things could be turned over to machinery. The growing of vegetables

cannot be so disposed of. Garden tools have been improved, but they are

still the same old one-man affairs--doing one thing, one row at a time.

Labor is still the big factor--and that, taken in combination with the

cost of transporting and handling such perishable stuff as garden

produce, explains why _the home gardener can grow his own vegetables

at less expense than he can buy them_. That is a good fact to

remember.

But after all, I doubt if most of us will look at the matter only after

consulting the columns of the household ledger. The big thing, the

salient feature of home gardening is not that we may get our vegetables

ten per cent. cheaper, but that we can have them one hundred per cent.

better. Even the long-keeping sorts, like squash, potatoes and onions,

are very perceptibly more delicious right from the home garden, fresh

from the vines or the ground; but when it comes to peas, and corn, and

lettuce,--well, there is absolutely nothing to compare with the home

garden ones, gathered fresh, in the early slanting sunlight, still

gemmed with dew, still crisp and tender and juicy, ready to carry every

atom of savory quality, without loss, to the dining table. Stale, flat

and unprofitable indeed, after these have once been tasted, seem the

limp, travel-weary, dusty things that are jounced around to us in the

butcher's cart and the grocery wagon. It is not in price alone that

home gardening pays. There is another point: the market gardener has to

grow the things that give the biggest yield. He has to sacrifice

quality to quantity. You do not. One cannot buy Golden Bantam corn, or

Mignonette lettuce, or Gradus peas in most markets. They are top

quality, but they do not fill the market crate enough times to the row

to pay the commercial grower. If you cannot afford to keep a

professional gardener there is only one way to have the best

vegetables--grow your own!

And this brings us to the third, and what may be the most important

reason why you should garden. It is the cheapest, healthiest, keenest

pleasure there is. Give me a sunny garden patch in the golden

springtime, when the trees are picking out their new gowns, in all the

various self-colored delicate grays and greens--strange how beautiful

they are, in the same old unchanging styles, isn't it?--give me seeds

to watch as they find the light, plants to tend as they take hold in

the fine, loose, rich soil, and you may have the other sports. And when

you have grown tired of their monotony, come back in summer to even the

smallest garden, and you will find in it, every day, a new problem to

be solved, a new campaign to be carried out, a new victory to win.

Better food, better health, better living--all these the home garden

offers you in abundance. And the price is only the price of every

worth-while thing--honest, cheerful patient work.

But enough for now of the dream garden. Put down your book. Put on your

old togs, light your pipe--some kind-hearted humanitarian should devise

for women such a kindly and comforting vice as smoking--and let's go

outdoors and look the place over, and pick out the best spot for that

garden-patch of yours.

CHAPTER III

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

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

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.

This, then, will give you an idea of a good garden soil. Perhaps in

yours there will be too much sand, or too much clay. That will be a

disadvantage, but one which energy and perseverance will soon overcome

to a great extent--by what methods may be learned in Chapter VIII.

DRAINAGE

There is, however, one other thing you must look out for in selecting

your garden site, and that is drainage. Dig down eight or twelve inches

after you have picked out a favorable spot, and examine the sub-soil.

This is the second strata, usually of different texture and color from

the rich surface soil, and harder than it. If you find a sandy or

gravelly bed, no matter how yellow and poor it looks, you have chosen

the right spot. But if it be a stiff, heavy clay, especially a blue

clay, you will have either to drain it or be content with a very late

garden--that is, unless you are at the top of a knoll or on a slope.

Chapter VII contains further suggestions in regard to this problem.

SOIL ANTECEDENTS

There was a further reason for, mentioning that strip of onion ground.

It is a very practical illustration of what last year's handling of the

soil means to this year's garden. If you can pick out a spot, even if

it is not the most desirable in other ways, that has been well enriched

or cultivated for a year or two previous, take that for this year's

garden. And in the meantime have the spot on which you intend to make

your permanent vegetable garden thoroughly "fitted," and grow there

this year a crop of potatoes or sweet corn, as suggested in Chapter IX.

Then next year you will have conditions just right to give your

vegetables a great start.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

There are other things of minor importance but worth considering, such

as the shape of your garden plot, for instance. The more nearly

rectangular, the more convenient it will be to work and the more easily

kept clean and neat. Have it large enough, or at least open on two

ends, so that a horse can be used in plowing and harrowing. And if by

any means you can have it within reach of an adequate supply of water,

that will be a tremendous help in seasons of protracted drought. Then

again, if you have ground enough, lay off two plots so that you can

take advantage of the practice of rotation, alternating grass, potatoes

or corn with the vegetable garden. Of course it is possible to practice

crop rotation to some extent within the limits of even the small

vegetable garden, but it will be much better, if possible, to rotate

the entire garden-patch.

All these things, then, one has to keep in mind in picking the spot

best suited for the home vegetable garden. It should be, if possible,

of convenient access; it should have a warm exposure and be well

enriched, well worked-up soil, not too light nor too heavy, and by all

means well drained. If it has been thoroughly cultivated for a year or

two previous, so much the better. If it is near a supply of water, so

situated that it can be at least plowed and harrowed with a horse, and

large enough to allow the garden proper to be shifted every other year

or two, still more the better.

Fill all of these requirements that you can, and then by taking full

advantage of the advantages you have, you can discount the

disadvantages. After all it is careful, persistent work, more than

natural advantages, that will tell the story; and a good garden does

_not_ grow--it is made.

CHAPTER IV

THE PLANTING PLAN

Having selected the garden spot, the next consideration, naturally, is

what shall be planted in it.

The old way was to get a few seed catalogues, pick out a list of the

vegetables most enthusiastically described by the (wholly

disinterested) seedsman, and then, when the time came, to put them in

at one or two plantings, and sowing each kind as far as the seed would

go. There is a better way--a way to make the garden produce more, to

yield things when you want them, and in the proper proportions.

All these advantages, you may suppose, must mean more work. On the

contrary, however, the new way makes very much less work and makes

results a hundred per cent. more certain. It is not necessary even that

more thought be put upon the garden, but forethought there must be.

Forethought, however, is much more satisfactory than hind-thought.

In the new way of gardening there are four great helps, four things

that will be of great assistance to the experienced gardener, and that

are indispensable to the success of the beginner. They are the Planting

Plan, the Planting Table, the Check List and the Garden Record.

Do not become discouraged at the formidable sound of that paragraph and

decide that after all you do not want to fuss so much over your garden;

that you are doing it for the fun of the thing anyway, and such

intricate systems will not be worth bothering with. The purpose of

those four garden helps is simply to make your work less and your

returns more. You might just as well refuse to use a wheel hoe because

the trowel was good enough for your grandmother's garden, as to refuse

to take advantage of the modern garden methods described in this

chapter. Without using them to some extent, or in some modified form,

you can never know just what you are doing with your garden or what

improvements to make next year. Of course, each of the plans or lists

suggested here is only one of many possible combinations. You should be

able to find, or better still to construct, similar ones better suited

to your individual taste, need and opportunity. That, however, does not

lessen the necessity of using some such system. It is just as necessary