800 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
MY FAMILY VEGETABLE GARDEN. 
D. E. GOODMAN, FARIBAULT. 
My garden is located on a southwestern slope, sheltered on the north 
by a wooded hill; on the top of this hill, surrounded with trees, stands my 
home. 
I am not a gardener, not even a farmer, but a book-keeper. My office 
hours are from 8 a. m. to 6 p. m., consequently my garden work must be 
done morning and evening, and what I know about gardening, when to 
plant, what to plant, and how to plant, I have learned largely from reading 
the Horticulturist and other periodicals of that nature. 
Five years ago I began to plant my garden. First, I broke up a strip 
at the foot of the hill, about 200 feet long east and west, and, perhaps, 40 
feet wide, which I planted mostly to corn and potatoes. Each year I have 
added a few feet of the hillside until my garden is now nearly 100 feet wide. 
Three years ago last spring I planted two rows of fruit trees the length of 
the garden, and every spring since I have added a row, until I now have six 
rows of trees, containing forty apples and crabs, sixteen plums, six cher- 
ries, seventeen grape vines and twenty black walnuts, two years old from 
the nuts. Between the trees I have gooseberries, currants and raspberries. 
You have by this time a general idea of my garden or gardens, for the 
space between each two rows of trees forms a long narrow garden by itself, 
so to speak. The space between the fence and the walnuts, I planted last 
spring to sweet corn and pop corn. The sweet corn I made in three plant- 
ings, about ten days apart, which gave us a long season of sweet corn. In 
the next strip I had beans, a bed of onion sets, and new and old straw- 
berry beds. Between the rows of the new strawberry bed I had my peas, 
also in three plantings. 
The next strip was wholly taken up with early potatoes. 
The next strip was the truck-garden proper. I began at the west end 
and sowed a bed of black seed onions; next a bed of parsnips; then carrots; 
then table beets; then a small bed of old onions to grow sets—and, by the 
way, this was the third time I had planted the same onions, and I am saving 
them again to see how long they will keep it up. After the onions came a 
patch of rutabagas, then a few more beans, then about thirty tomato 
plants and a few hills of cucumbers. The rest of the strip I gave to the boys 
for their very own melon patch. 
The last strip, on the up hill side of the youngest row of trees, a piece 
about eight feet wide, I planted one-half to musk melons and one-half to 
watermelons. Among the grape vines, which are very small, I had petunias, 
four o’clocks, zinnias, marigolds, and other old fashioned flowers. This 
part of the garden was very showy all summer and late into the fall. 
Of course, my trees and bushes are small and not yet in the way, but I 
can see that before long I shall have to find some other place for the gar- 
den, as the trees have a mortgage on the ground and will soon foreclose. 
After I had all planted and while hoeing, wherever I found a vacancy I 
dropped a bean—I always had a few beans in my overalls pocket—along 
the sides, around the trees, and in the corners, wherever there was room, I 
dropped a bean, and no place was wasted. 
From this garden—the general plan of which I saw in the Horticultur- 
ist some years ago (perhaps the author is present)—I furnished my family 
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