86 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



Nearness to Water Supply. The summer garden should be 

 near the water supply, if it be developed from home sources, or 

 the water should be piped to it, which is almost equivalent to mov- 

 ing the reservoir to the garden site. Carriage of water in a flume 

 entails losses by leakage and evaporation and earth-ditches are dis- 

 tressingly wasteful by evaporation and percolation. One often sees 

 water started on its way from the home-site tanks toward a distant 

 garden, making mud-holes and losing volume all the way. In many 

 cases another well-outfit for the sole use of the garden would be a 

 good investment. 



Nearness to the Home. If fairly good conditions exist near 

 the home site, by all means locate the garden there. It will win 

 the interest and profit by the attention of the house folks and will 

 yield its supply directly to their hands in most cases. Besides, with 

 the tools handy, spare hours now and then will be given to its 

 working when the leisure is too short to warrant or incline one to 

 walk to a distant patch. The time thus saved may almost keep 

 the garden going in good shape. Then, a well-kept garden is an 

 ornament and the ornamentation of our rural homes is not usually 

 over rich. 



Protection from Intrusion. To be any comfort and gratfica- 

 tion whatever the farm garden must be protected from intruders. 

 One of the chief objections to locating vegetable patches here and 

 there in the best situations for special purposes lies in the trouble 

 of excluding wild marauders of all sizes from a jack-rabbit to a 

 deer and the whole range of domestic invaders from the pasture or 

 corral. This fact alone compels many to forego vegetable planting 

 except in the well-fenced house-yard. It is not difficult to inclose 

 a few square rods with wire netting or with the woven fence of 

 wire and lath, and driven posts the whole to be rolled up and 

 stored or moved to another inclosure as the progress of the season 

 gives it new uses. 



A home-grown fence is quite possible in California, using for 

 pickets the southern cane or the Asiatic bamboos, both of which 

 grow readily on moist land in this state. Mr. C. A. Maul of Kern 

 county was recently reported to have completed the construction of 

 a mile of fence, using these canes for pickets. His plan was this : 

 Second-hand railroad ties were bought and split for posts. These 

 were set a rod apart. With a machine that cost about twenty-five 

 dollars, the canes were woven into a web, using six No. 14 wires 

 for the chain. The canes were cut three and one-half feet long, the 

 fence posts are four feet high and along the top of them a barbed 

 wire is stretched, so that when completed one has a chicken or 

 rabbit proof fence as well as a strong stock fence. This fence, Mr. 

 Maul says, can be built for forty cents a rod where one raises his 

 own cane. It is very durable, the cane becoming as hard as bone 

 and never rotting; rabbits cannot gnaw it, and it will not ignite 

 from burning grass near it as common pine fencing or lath will ; 



