STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 47 
~way, the good housewife persuades her agricultural lord to plow the garden. 
This is usually done on Saturday, just as he is in a hurry to go to town, and 
the job is rushed through in orthodox style. He goes to a grocery and 
buys a five-cent paper of onion and beet, a ten-cent package of peas, and 
perhaps a dozen other sorts in the same proportion. They are selected 
from a commission box of slop-bucket seeds, and it is a great relief if they 
don’t grow, as in that case all trouble about the garden is done, until time 
“to go through the same experience the next year. Under the most favora- 
ble circumstances a few sickly products are gathered and it is voted that a 
farm garden don’t pay. Now I take the position that as a matter of econ- 
omy a good farm garden is a paying necessity; considered from a sanitary 
point, a noble charity. 
There is no doubt but half the doctor’s bills could be saved by the farming 
community, and the people kept in better health if a thorough and persistent 
plan of liberal supply of wholesome vegetable food was the rule instead of 
the exception. 
Let us lay out a plan for a farm garden. We will call it one acre in ex- 
‘tent. Ten rods by sixteen is a good form, the largest way east and west, 
in order that the rows, which to accommodate variety should run the short 
way, may run north and south; thus giving equal distribution of light and 
heat from the sun. Shelter from winds is an important item. Plant a 
Alouble row of Scotch pine around the east, north and west sides, and some 
low growing evergreens, or one that can be sheared down to six feet on the 
south, in order that we are not too much troubled with shade. Inside of 
these rows of trees there should be a border all around the garden of at 
‘least eight feet of blue grass or white clover sward to turn the team on in 
plowing and cultivating. Understand we are writing of a vegetable garden, 
and as such we do not want a currant-bush or shrub of any kind within its 
sacred limits. Give these important factors a plat by themselves. 
I have no sympathy with the old style of garden, that must have a row of 
currant or raspberry bushes about every ten feet, with the intermediate 
space devoted to vegetables. It is inconvenient to cultivate and unsatis- 
factory in its results. 
So plan and arrange that every foot can be plowed, and that all the sorts 
that are strong growers can be cultivated by horse. 
If practicable the exposure should be south or east. The soil must be 
good, either naturally or from the liberal application of fertilizers. There 
is no vegetable crop but is better in proportion that the soil it grows in is 
made rich, until a certain limit is reached. 
Even beans, reported to do well on land too poor for any other use agri- 
culturally, will do better in land that will grow one hundred bushels of corn 
‘to the acre. 
Having your ground well prepared, you will see that you procure seeds 
from a reiiable source, for you are in earnest now, and cannot afford to plant 
poor seeds. 
Supposing that you have selected everything—the best of its kind—we 
will proceed to plant: 
Beginning upon the west side, we will plant two rows of Burr’s improved 
evergreen sweet corn; next two rows of Moore’s Concord, then two rows 
of Crosby’s Early, and lastly four rows of Early Minnesota sweet corn. 
