Vegetable Gardening 1395 



VEGETABLE-GARDENING 



Often on the farm or at the town or city home, the actual planning 

 for the home garden, as well as the carrying out of its details, is done 

 not by the farmer nor by his man but by a woman. It is therefore highly 

 important that helpful suggestions regarding the requirements of vege- 

 tables should be available to her. 



PLANNING 



In order to obtain the greatest success in any undertaking, it is 

 important that a plan of operation should first be definitely decided 

 upon. It is essential to have a well-drawn plan that will be readily 

 understood even after it has been laid aside for a year. 



If the prospective gardener will take a piece of paper at least 15 

 inches wide and 27 or 28 inches long, it will be possible, by a very 

 simple method, to draw a plan of the garden. As the piece of paper is 

 small, it will be necessary to reduce the size of the garden as represented 

 on it. That process is called reducing to a unit, or scale. If we say that 

 every foot of the garden can be drawn on paper by using the scale of 

 \ inch, we have a unit of measure designated as " \ inch equals 1 foot." 

 Using such a scale on a garden 30 by 30 feet, we should have a drawing 

 measuring 7^ inches on each side. If the garden is larger than this the 

 measurements on the plan will of course be correspondingly larger. By 

 making use of a unit of measure, or scale, in our outline of a garden we 

 can draw the rows as they should come, always remembering that for 

 each foot in the garden we use one quarter of an inch on the paper. 



How shall one know just what space to allow between the rows of vege- 

 tables, as well as between the vegetables in the rows? The planting- 

 table given on page 1402 contains information on both those questions. 

 It is very important to plan in such a way that small vegetables shall be 

 grown toward the south and taller-growing vegetables toward the north. 

 Such an arrangement will enable each vegetable to have sunlight without 

 being shaded by taller-growing plants.* 



seeds 

 After a proper plan for the garden has been drawn on paper, the next 

 step is the calculation of just how much seed will be needed. The planting- 

 table will be of assistance here, as it shows the amount of seed required 

 for 100 feet of row. If the row in the garden is 50 feet long, the seed 



* Lesson 34 of the Cornell Reading-Course for the Farm, Vegetable-Gardening Series No. 2, will be 

 helpful in the planning of home gardens. For this bulletin address the Cornell Reading-Course for the 

 Farm, New York State College of Agriculture, Ithaca. N. Y. 



