XV 



THE VEGETABLE GARDEN 



THE prose of gardening vegetable-raising is quite 

 as interesting as its poetry flower culture, 

 when it is well done. There is nothing that gives one 

 a greater satisfaction than a model vegetable garden, 

 no matter how small it may be. The old notion that 

 vegetable seed had merely to be stuck in the ground 

 to come forth fruitfully for the family table has long 

 since been dissipated by the knowledge that no plants 

 require more careful attention and more good common 

 sense in starting them and in bringing them to maturity 

 than do vegetables. 



Nevertheless any garden beginner who has pro- 

 fited by what he has learned in these pages has only 

 to apply the information thus gleaned to the making 

 of a vegetable garden. The appended tables will be of 

 great service to the amateur gardener, and by follow- 

 ing these directions, and broadening his knowledge 

 by the actual experience he will derive from his first 

 year's garden, raising vegetables will no longer be a 

 thing that seems fraught with more difficulties than 

 appear worth while coping with. Instead, after he 



