





^o.'s-i^^^^^'y:^^-^, j5 



.lOUMAL OF RURAL ART AM) RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. II. 



APRIL, 1848. 



No. 10. 



The Kitchen Garden is at once the most 

 humble and the most useful department of 

 horticulture. It can no more be allowed to 

 stand still than the sun himself. Luckily, 

 (or unluckily,) man must eat; and, omni- 

 verous as he is, he must gather food from 

 both the animal and the vegetable kingdom. 



Now there a^e, we trust, few of our 

 readers who need an argument to prove 

 what a wide difference is very often found 

 between vegetables grown in different gar- 

 dens ; how truly the products of one shall 

 be small, tough and fibrous, and those of 

 another, large, tender and succulent. Some- 

 times the former defects are owing to bad 

 culture, but more frequently to unsuitable 

 soil. It is to this latter condition of things 

 that we turn, with the hope of saying some- 

 thing which, if not new, shall at least be 

 somewhat useful, and to the point. 



Nothing, in an}' temperate cliipate, is 

 easier than the general cultivation of vege- 

 tables in most parts of the United States. 

 With our summer sun, equal in heat 

 and brilliancy to that of the equator, we 

 can grow the beans of Lima, the melons 

 of the Mediterranean, the tomatoes and 

 egg-plants of South America, without hot- 

 beds, and wiih such ease and profusion that it 

 fills a newly arrived English or French gar- 

 voL. II. 66 



dener with the most unqualified astonish- 

 ment. Hence, in all good soils, with a 

 smaller amount of labor than is elsewhere 

 bestowed in the same latitudes, our vege- 

 tables are produced in the most prodigal 

 abundance. 



But now fur the exceptions. Every man 

 cannot " locate" himself in precisely that 

 position where the best soil is to be found. 

 Circumstances, on the contrary, often force 

 us to build houses, and make kitchen gar- 

 dens, where Dame Nature evidently never 

 contemplated such a thing ; where, in fact, 

 instead of the rich, deep accumulations of 

 fertile soil, that she frequently offers us in 

 this country, she has only given us the 

 " short commons" allowance o( sand or claij. 



The two kinds of kitchen gardens among 

 us, which most demand skill and intelligent 

 labor, are those which are naturally too 

 sandy or too clayey. It is not difficult, at a 

 glance, to see how these might be, and 

 ought to be treated to improve them great- 

 ly. But we have observed — such is the 

 force of habit — that nine-tenths of those 

 who have gardens of this description, go on 

 in the same manner as their neighbors 

 who have the best soil, — manuring and 

 cultivating precisely in the ordinary ivay, 

 and then grumbling in quite a different 



