My Garden 87 



manured and properly attended to was more 

 productive than four square feet half taken care 

 of, and his results proved the soundness of his 

 ideas. It was owing to this neighbor's advice 

 that my second summer's work in my little 

 garden for I was determined not to give the 

 ground up although it had proved a costly toy, 

 was far more satisfactory in every way than 

 the first. I discovered that my neighbor's 

 total expenses of the year for his garden, which 

 was a far larger one than mine, were less than 

 $10, nine tenths of which sum went for manure. 

 He did all the work himself, got his seeds and 

 plants from neighboring gardens, and the value 

 of his product exceeded $100 during the sum- 

 mer. This was something like gardening, and 

 if one man not a Hercules could do it, why not 

 I? My second summer showed that by devot- 

 ing an average of two hours a day to my little 

 garden patch I could save about fifty dollars in 

 the vegetable bill of the family. Estimating 

 that the garden work begins on the 1st of May 

 and ends on the ist of September, we have 

 four months, or 120 days, during which I gave 

 two hours a day, or 240 hours, to my garden. 



