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.