86 Details and Dollars 



They rotted where they grew, and seemed to 

 serve no purpose except perhaps to enable my 

 assistant to point to something in the garden 

 which looked like a successful vegetable. To 

 be brief over a somewhat painful experiment, 

 and estimating the garden stuff that we really 

 got out of my little plot, I should say that de- 

 livered at our door the stuff would have cost 

 us not more than $15, or about half its actual 

 cost. I do not take into account the value of 

 my work in hoeing up tons of weeds and pour- 

 ing down tons of water, because the practical 

 knowledge I gathered more than offsets these 

 tremendous labors. 



In the meantime I had profited by studying 

 neighboring gardens, notably a very beautiful 

 one belonging to a neighbor who did all the 

 work himself and produced a crop of vege- 

 tables which seemed to me nothing less than 

 miraculous. Every inch in this neighbor's 

 garden seemed to grow something; his vege- 

 tables took up so much room, were so close 

 together that the weeds had not a chance to 

 squeeze themselves in. He worked upon the 

 theory that one square foot of garden properly 



