Introduction 



has had no system heretofore in the garden 

 work to see how httle time is really required to 

 care for a garden successfully. The failure to 

 co-operate with nature at the right time may 

 result in many hours of wearisome work. 



Take the matter of weeds; — if the planting is 

 closely watched and the weeds cut off as quickly 

 as they show a seed leaf above ground, and before 

 they have stuck their roots deeply enough into 

 the ground to make more than a mere stirring of 

 the soil necessary, an entire week's crop of weeds 

 will be destroyed with one stirring of the soil. 

 Weeds come in relays a week or ten days apart, 

 come not at all if the soil is kept properly stirred 

 — which should be after every rain and between 

 if the rain is infrequent, and it is well worth one's 

 time to exercise a little self-denial and give this 

 cultivation even though it may mean letting 

 something else go that one would like to do. 



And one need not worry too much about being 

 scientific in one's gardening; insecticides, fungi- 

 cides and the like are the allies of the careless 

 gardener, but the wide awake, industrious gar- 



vii 



