140 PRIZE GARDENING 



A Productive Southern Garden, making a return 

 of three hundred and fifty-two dollars and ninety-two 

 cents at cost of eighty-four dollars and thirty-five cents, 

 was entered by Mrs. J. W. Bryan of Georgia, winner 

 of one of the Allen special prizes. The location is 

 Lookout mountain, a sandy loam, with clay subsoil; 

 area, about one acre, manured with plenty of stable 

 and poultry manure. The tools were a bull tongue 

 plow, a horse hoe, a wheel hoe and the common hand 

 garden tools, all together valued at twenty-three dol- 

 lars. Northern seed was used, costing thirty-one 

 dollars. Income began April 15 with asparagus, fol- 

 lowed by radish, mustard greens and spinach. The first 

 Clipper peas were sold May 13, and subsequent sales 

 included a great variety of garden products. The 

 family had all the garden stuff they could use and a 

 surplus for the neighbors. Cost, thirty dollars and 

 eighty-three cents ; income, thirty-nine dollars and fifty- 

 seven cents. The illustration shows Mrs. Bryan's 

 homelike residence. 



Since the garden contest, writes Mrs. Bryan, we 

 never feel a drouth in the garden, because I learned 

 then that a dust mulch, formed by the weekly use of 

 the horse hoe over the whole garden, prevents an injury 

 to the plants by even a protracted dryness. I find also 

 an awakened interest in my neighbors in their gardens 

 by the success of my garden, while theirs suffered from 

 the drouth. 



Perseverance Under Difficulty, was the experience 

 of Mrs. G. H. Berger, CaHfornia, who made a plucky 

 fight for her garden against great odds, and who 

 writes : " I have the satisfaction of knowing my garden 

 would have been a great success had I been able to 

 keep away the vermin and the cows." Roots of fern 

 and poison oak filled the soil. Rabbits ate the peas, 

 melons and peanut vines, moles devoured the beans, 



