66 GARDENING WITH BRAINS ^ 



way to make sure of it is to tread the soil firmly 

 after the fertilizer has been thoroughly mixed 

 with the soil in the furrow, and again, more 

 gently, after the seeds have been put in and 

 covered the right depth. 



BE A GAMBLER 



Peter Henderson was so impressed by the 

 importance of the use of the feet in gardening 

 that he wrote a special circular on the subject. 



Of course, if you are satisfied with coarse, 

 tough, stringy vegetables, such as most people 

 live on, you needn't attend to these details; 

 but I am writing as an epicure for epicures. 

 In a later chapter I shall try to determine just 

 what kind of an animal an epicure is. 



To be a successful gardener one must not 

 only have brains and be a foot man as well as 

 hand laborer, but one must also be a gambler. 

 The trouble with most of our farmers and gar- 

 deners is that they are afraid to take chances. 

 During the two summers we spent on Mark 

 Twain's place at Redding, Connecticut, our 

 nearest neighbor was an Englishwoman, Mrs. 

 St. Maur, who used her brains in gardening; 

 in fact, she wrote a book, and a good one, on 

 gardening. She was a gambler, too, not afraid 

 to brave the dangers of late frosts, and the result 

 was that she was usually eating juicy vege- 

 tables two or three weeks before others. 



That has always been my way. What if a 



