VI. 



A FEW WORDS ON THE KITCHEN GARDEN. 



April, 1848. 



npHE Kitchen Garden is at once the most humble and the most 

 JL useful department of horticulture. It can no more be allowed 

 to stand still than the sun himself. Luckily (or unluckily), man 

 must eat ; and, omnivorous as he is, he must gather food from both 

 the animal and the vegetable kingdom. 



Now there are, we trust, few of our readers who need an argu- 

 ment to prove what a wide difference is very often found between 

 vegetables grown in different gardens ; how truly the products of one 

 shall be small, tough, and fibrous, and those of another, large, ten- 

 der, and succulent. Sometimes the former defects are owing to bad 

 culture, but more frequently to unsuitable soil. It is to this latter 

 condition of things that we turn, with the hope of saying something 

 which, if not new, shall at least be somewhat useful, and to the 

 point. 



Nothing, in any temperate climate, is easier than the general culti- 

 vation of vegetables in most parts of the United States. With our 

 summer sun, equal in heat and brilliancy to that of the equator, we can 

 grow the beans of Lima, the melons of the Mediterranean, the toma- 

 toes and egg-plants of South America, without hot-beds ; and with 

 such ease and profusion that it fills a newly arrived English or French 

 gardener with the most unqualified astonishment. Hence, in all good 

 soils, with a smaller amount of labor than is elsewhere bestowed in 

 the same latitudes, our vegetables are produced in the most prodigal 

 abundance. 



