THE VEGETABLE GARDEN 303 



It is a point of great importance to select 

 varieties of each kind that will give the greatest 

 yield consistent with highest quality, in small 

 space. I speak especially and emphatically of 

 this because the most prolific varieties are 

 usually of the market gardeners' "quality" — 

 which means that actual quality has been sac- 

 rificed to four things that market gardeners 

 must have — or believe they must have — above 

 all else, namely: earliness, shipping substance, 

 tremendous yield, and fine appearance. If fine 

 flavor accompanies these, it is so much ^ain; if 

 it does not, it matters not to the commercial 

 grower ! In choosing seeds therefore avoid those 

 kinds of which it is said they are favorites with 

 truckers. Seek quality first and after this 

 abundance — and forget the rest. 



Without going over the devious ways by 

 which the conclusion has been arrived at, I 

 will say that six hundred square feet of ground 

 will produce, under intensive cultivation, all 

 the vegetables, including potatoes, that one 

 adult will require for one year. As the latter 

 vegetable occupied one third of this space — in 

 the tests — it follows that four hundred square 

 feet will suffice if potatoes are not to be grown; 

 which reduces itself to a plot of ground twenty 

 by twenty feet in size. Adding to this a fair 



