THE KITCHEN GARDEN. 



The Kitchen Garden deserves more attention from our 

 farmers than it has generally received. The products of a good 

 garden are worth all that they cost, for the single purpose of 

 supplying the farmer's table with that variety of food which the 

 best development of body and mind require. It is no uncom- 

 mon thing to find the table of a well-to-do farmer very scantily 

 supplied with vegetables. Beyond that great staple, the potato, 

 there is seldom any vegetable on the table, year in and year out. 

 Sometimes a little variety is obtaiaed by cooking a few of the 

 field peas when green, or a few ears of corn, which the good wife 

 gathers, robbing the farm stock of their coarse fare, that she may 

 give a little variety to her table. The delicious wrinkled garden 

 peas, not only more palatable but more nutritious, are wholly 

 unknown, and so of all the comfortable and wholesome variety of 

 culinary products of the well-managed garden. This is a great 

 mistake. Man does not live by bread alone, even in a mere physical 

 view of that statement. A considerable variety of food best develops 

 the physical part of our being. There is also a subtle correspon- 

 dence between the texture of our bodies and that of the food we 

 consume. The consumption of the coarsest products only, will 

 tend to make coarse men. A well-stocked and weU-kept garden 

 is a sure concomitant of a more intelligent and more refined yeo- 

 manry. 



Besides this, the influence of the garden and of the pleasant 

 fruits and vegetables it yields, upon the minds and hearts of the 

 children of the farm, is fruitful of good. Too little is done to 

 make home attractive. It should be the most lovely spot on 

 earth to all its inmates. "Be it ever so homely, there is no 

 place like home," but we should not travestie this heaven-im- 



