Il8 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



table of which a little goes a long way at home, 

 and for which there is but a limited market abroad. 

 There came a summer, two or three seasons back, 

 when having planted what I esteemed the abso- 

 lute minimum we were inundated, deluged with 

 squash, until even the pigs wearied of them, grown 

 from the seed of the last year's fruit that had been 

 left on the vine to rot. This despite the facts that 

 squash is little more than a subtropical vegetable, 

 and the previous winter was the most severe in the 

 Weather Bureau's records. Sometime I shall take 

 a leaf from great-grandmother's book and plant no 

 squash at all. 



The first and most important job in any gar- 

 den is laying it out on paper, marking in each 

 row the succession of plantings, calculating the 

 amounts of seeds needed, and writing up the seed 

 order. To do this the records of the last year's 

 crops and plantings, as well as the copy of the last 

 seed order, are extremely helpful. The order shows 

 not only the quantity but the variety of each kind 

 of seed bought. There are few garden vegetables 

 of which the number of varieties is not legion. Not 

 all varieties thrive as well on the same land. When 

 we strike a good one we stick to it. If unsatisfac- 

 tory we check the list and try a new one. Some- 

 times we try two or three new varieties in one 

 year; I had to do that with melons and lima beans 



