Il8 tRl2E GARDENING 



declared with emphasis by certain Hghts of the medical 

 profession. Still worse to depend on the crude theo- 

 ries and medicated tipples of the advertising quacks. 

 Pushing a garden plow is better than pills, and plant- 

 ing the seeds a better tonic than any patent powders. 



If some new type of philanthropist would donate 

 hospital sites to be divided into small garden plots to 

 be worked by ailing women, it is a question if the plan 

 would not finally avert more suffering than if the land 

 were covered with hospital buildings and sanitariums. 

 At any rate, for the average woman, a garden in the 

 back yard is better than an apothecary shop on the 

 next corner, and a dollar invested outdoors has saved 

 many a family another dollar in doctors' fees and ten 

 times its value in trouble and suffering. But there are 

 plenty of women who make gardening pay them also 

 in dollars and cents. 



A Swart Woman's Success. — One of the most 

 successful gardeners in the contest was Miss Sadie A. 

 Dibble of Connecticut, who did nearly all the work of 

 planting and cultivating, and all the harvesting and 

 marketing in a fruit and vegetable garden of three- 

 fourths of an acre. 



From this plot of ground she raised products worth 

 two hundred and twenty-three dollars and thirty-five 

 cents, besides giving away twenty-five dollars worth 

 and taking twenty-five dollars more in premiums at 

 the local fair, making the total income two hundred 

 and seventy-three dollars and thirty-five cents. The 

 expense for labor was forty-five dollars and twenty 

 cents ; fertilizer, twelve dollars ; seeds, four dollars and 

 seventy cents, and poisons twenty cents, or a total of 

 sixty-two dollars and fifteen cents, which left a profit 

 of two hundred and eleven dollars and twenty cents. 

 The products were valued at wholesale rates and 

 about one-third less than the returns actually received, 



