26 



Gardening 



FIG. 22. "Weeds and bugs claim much of the attention of the gardener; but 

 if he be master of his business, he will destroy the former as soon as they germi- 

 nate, and the latter during the earliest stages of their growth." Old Farmer's 

 Almanac 



A gardener is, therefore, a caretaker of plants one 

 who watches over them and sees that their needs are 

 supplied, so that they will flourish and yield him an 

 abundant crop. 



Learning to be a gardener. One may learn much 

 about how to grow plants by growing them. By observ- 

 ing how our garden plants develop under different 

 conditions, we may judge what is best for them. It 

 was thus that our ancestors learned to raise plants, for 

 gardening is indeed an old art. In fact, many of our 

 important food crops were cultivated before the days 

 of written history. Man learned how to grow plants 

 long before he knew much about how plants grow. 



But within the last hundred years plants have been 

 carefully studied in order to find (i) how they obtain 

 food materials from the soil, (2) what sorts of food 



