NATIONAL COUNCIL OF HORTICULTURE 97 



college, give us, as a rule, our best type. I enter the plea, threfore, 

 for instruction that will bring these fundamental facts to the minds of 

 students in such a way that they will appreciate and understand them 

 when they leave college. It would seem to me that this National Coun- 

 cil of Horticulture might do good service by bringing about such a 

 movement. 



Air. Kendel : Mr. Chairman, the more I have to do with this 

 matter of school gardens the more I believe that the beginnings of 

 gardening will have to be taught in the public schools of our cities. 

 District schools are too small to make the necessary rivalry that city 

 schools have, to carry on such work successfully. 



Our Home Gardening Association of Cleveland, O., made an ex- 

 periment this year that has been successful enough to encourage us 

 very much. We secured the use of a three-acre tract of land in the 

 heart of the city and the committee that was placed in charge of it 

 fenced off about one acre, built a good tool house, hauled eighty loads 

 of manure on it and plowed it in. We divided this area into four sec- 

 tions, each section into five plots, with a boy for each plot. Our plan 

 was to make this garden a training school for boys who wished to 

 make gardening a business, which was to stand in the same relation 

 to the school gardens as the high schools do to the grammar schools. 

 We wanted boys that had had a preliminary training of a year or two 

 in the school gardens to continue their training in advance lines. We 

 decided to make comparative tests of a number of varieties of different 

 kinds of vegetables, which could not be done in the schools on account 

 of the necessary small beds available, giving each group of five boys 

 all the varieties and placing each such group in competition with the 

 other three. Each boy had six beds 5x22 feet and each group tested 

 about fifteen varieties of lettuce, as many peas, perhaps a dozen varie- 

 ties of radish and the same of beans and beets. They also had two 

 varieties of tomatoes and peppers and one of egg plant, sweet corn and 

 later on turnips. Each boy had at most three of each kind. 



They were shown how to grow successive crops on most of these 

 beds. Radish was sown between the rows of lettuce and when both 

 were gone, beets were transplanted into the same beds from the beds 

 in which the seeds were sown. Beans followed peas. Late crops of 

 beans were also planted between the rows of corn apparently to the 

 benefit of both crops. 



Of course we made a few mistakes for we had it all to learn, 

 nothing like it having ever been attempted so far as we could find out. 

 We learned, however, and this is in line with the point already referred 

 to by one of the speakers, that some boys have the knack for garden- 

 ing and will make gardeners and others have not. 



It seems to me we will not have to wait until the boy is grown to 

 find out if he is suited for this business; it develops very young. I do 

 not think the oldest of our twenty boys was over fourteen and they 

 ranged down to nine or ten. 



Now it seems to me that in our school gardens is the place to begin 

 to educate our future agricultural college professors and at a time 



