6o8 



Home Nature-Study Course. 



by having a salad sandwich festival — of the details of which I will 

 speak later. 



Directions for planting the seeds and sets are in every reliable 

 seed catalogue and, therefore, need not be repeated here. 



The chief mission in having plants in small pots in the school room 

 is that the children may become acquainted with at least one kind of 

 plant, also to know the pride of creation and of ownership. Those two 

 objects are the controlling ones, and the harvest whatever it may be 

 in the stalks of peppergrass, is incidental. 



I now wish to speak of out-door planting. This plan gives an 

 experience and also a harvest worthy of consideration. 



Location of Garden. 



The type of apprentice garden that I have in mind for you to under- 

 take will not have a life of more than six to eight weeks. This I con- 

 sider to be as long a period as we can reasonably expect to maintain 

 the interest of a child who is an apprentice in gardening. Before the 

 close of school in June, all the crops will be harvested, and the garden 

 ready to be abandoned. By this plan the teacher need not provide for 

 any care during the summer vacation, which is always a serious problem 

 in school ground gardens. Also the enterprise should be abandoned 

 before interest declines, and it becomes a bore to the child. I have 

 spoken in previous pages of giving instruction in small doses. As the 

 purpose in apprentice gardening is for instruction to be given by the 

 teacher, the planting must be made on the school grounds, or on an 

 adjacent lot. Most children outside of congested parts of cities have 

 opportunities for plants at their homes. To all such, urge that they 



have duplicate gar- 

 dens at their homes 

 under the parents' 

 eye and encourage- 

 ment. These home 

 gardens often educate 

 the parents as well as 

 the child. 



Size of Garden. 



The (|uestion is not 

 so much how large, 

 but how small the 



-This garden is about as large as a good siced garden shall be. We 

 handkerchief. must not forget that 



Fig. 3.- 



