Efficiency in Backyard Gardening, II. — By Adolph Kruhm, 



MAKING A PROPER START WITH AN OUT LINED PLAN OF RECORDS-TOOLS 

 THAT REALLY HELP — HOW TO SOW EFFICIENTLY AND WITH JUDGMENT 



Ohio 



ONE day last July, 

 a friend asked me 

 to call and see 

 his backyard gar- 

 den. Tempted and encour- 

 aged by reading some 

 articles on the subject, he 

 had planned and planted, 

 but, after all, things did not 

 look quite right ! He wanted 

 a garden doctor to visit his 

 patch; he wanted to know 

 why bean plants looked 

 yellowish and blossoms 

 d ro p p e d before setting 

 beans; why lettuce would 

 wither before making heads ; 

 why the tomato plants 

 looked sickly. 



A single glance at the 

 garden revealed the reason 

 for all the trouble. My 

 first question was, "Where 

 is your hoe?" And the 

 answer was, "Oh, I haven't 

 a hoe. Do I need one?" 

 Right then and there, I 

 settled down to give Mr. 

 Backyard Gardener a little 

 talk which I repeat here. 



A LECTURE ON CULTIVATION 



To sow seeds, to watch 

 the seedling plants come 

 up and then to look on 

 without helping them by 

 hoeing, may be compared 

 to keeping a baby in a 

 stuffy room all day and 

 putting it to bed night 

 after night without shak- 

 ing its pillows or changing 

 its bedding. To be suc- 

 cessful in the garden you 

 must hoe, hoe and hoe 

 again! The day those little 

 seedling plants peep 

 through the ground, then 

 yours is the responsibility 

 of caring for their lives ! 



▼ Why should we hoe? The 



purpose is three-fold: (i) 

 To kill the weeds, (2) to 

 provide a dust mulch and 

 (3) to aerate the soil. In 

 the first place, these weeds 

 were originally intended to 

 shade the ground, for na- 

 ture dislikes bare ground. But since the 

 weeds consume the plant food which we 

 want to store in our vegetables, it is 

 necessary in our economy to dispose of 

 these interlopers so as to give the culti- 

 vated crops a maximum chance. 



In disposing of the weeds, we rob the 

 soil of its natural covering. Left bare, this 

 soil will get hard, then crack open, and 

 soon nothing can live in it. We gardeners 

 therefore provide another cover by hoeing 



This label ha; 

 seen service 



until the soil becomes pulverized. The 

 dust mulch shades and covers the soil just 

 as effectively as a crop of weeds, without 

 doing the damage that may be traced to 

 the latter. To keep the soil free from 

 weeds, and to provide a dust mulch is the 

 chief reason for hoeing; incidentally, it also 

 gives the air a chance to penetrate the sur- 

 face and to sweeten the soil. 



Hoeing is quite as much of a fine art as 

 digging, raking, and planting. Early in 

 the season, hoe close to the row, and hoe 

 deeply. This will loosen the soil to a con- 

 siderable depth and the frequent spring 

 rains will go dowm deeply, to be stored for 

 the dry summer months. 



Hold your hoe on a slant, the back of 

 hoe toward the row, the edge away from 

 the row, so that a corner always strikes 

 the soil. By doing so, you are less apt to 

 damage spreading roots than when the 

 full width of the hoe strikes the soil every- 

 time. As the season progresses, and plants 

 begin to spread, keep farther away from 

 the row and do not hoe quite so deep. 



About as good a tool as any, to be used 

 for cultivating between the rows during 

 the summer months, is a narrow, stout 

 rake. It will pulverize the soil even better 

 than a hoe, and the average backyard gar- 

 dener may trust himself more with it than 

 with a hoe, since the teeth of the rake cannot 

 go as far into the soil as the blade of a hoe. 



The dust mulch which is created by the 

 constant hoeing prevents the evaporation of 

 the moisture stored in the soil. An ideal 

 tool, with which to maintain a dust mulch 

 with little effort, is the wheelhoe. Every 

 backyard gardener cultivating 30 x 50 ft. 

 of ground needs one, and in mentioning 

 this handy implement, I cannot resist the 

 temptation of saying a few words about 



TOOLS EVERY BACKYARD GARDENER NEEDS 



Unless backed by bushels and bushels 

 of enthusiasm and love for the work, dig- 

 ging, hoeing, cultivating and the various 

 other duties of the gardener will soon ap- 

 pear like a hardship. The right kind of 

 tools — a tool for every purpose — will 

 make many tedious jobs easier and will 

 help you to keep on considering gardening 

 a recreation, rather than hard work. 



For system's sake, I am going to divide 

 tools and gardening accessories into three 

 classes: There are some tools that are 

 necessary; others that are desirable; and 

 still others that are a luxury, but still 

 good to have around. 



To "make a garden," we need primarily 

 three tools: A spade, a rake and a hoe. 

 Some of my disciples assure me that a 

 fork is handled more easily and does better 

 work than a spade. As to that, I got 

 tired years ago trying to straighten out 

 bent fork prongs. When buying spade and 

 rake, take the advice given by Aunt Mary 

 in "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," 

 "Buy a good one that will last." 



12 



When it comes to a hoe, get two. Get a 

 good sturdy one and a little narrow one 

 as shown in illustration. This type of 

 hoe proves especially handy early in the 

 season, for with the two teeth on the upper 

 side, you can straddle rows of young seed- 

 lings, hoeing both sides at once. So much 

 for tools that are necessary. 



Among the desirable tools, I would 

 include the wheelhoe, a trowel and a gar- 

 den fine. No handier implement than the 

 wheelhoe was ever invented, and $4.50 

 will buy you a whole collection of attach- 

 ments that will make gardening a joy. 

 There are cultivator teeth for stirring the 

 dust mulch, weed cutters for first early 

 cultivation (see illustration), a "firefly" 

 plow for making the furrows and hilling, 

 and discs for pulverizing lumpy soil. To 

 get the most use out of a wheel hoe, the 

 garden should be laid out in long rows; but 

 about that in another chapter. 



A trowel will prove especially handy at 

 the time of setting out tomatoes, peppers 

 and eggplants as well as flowering pot 

 plants. When you buy a trowel, be pre- 

 pared to pay thirty cents or more. Rather 

 than buy one of the fifteen cent kind (of 

 which you would need three in the course 

 of one season) , I would stick to my hoe for 

 making the holes in which to set the plants. 



A garden line is suggested as a desirable 

 accessory for the reason that it is not very 

 easy to keep rows straight if they are longer 

 than ten feet. At the same time, rows 

 must be straight or cultivation early in the 

 season will prove difficult. 



Now as to the tools which I consider a 

 luxury. There are Cleves angle trowel, 

 Excelsior hand-weeder, a wheelbarrow 

 and a hose. The angle trowel is the 

 handiest thing made for thinning out 

 seedlings. The Excelsior hand-weeder is 

 excellent for stirring the soil between nar- 

 row rows of seedlings, as in hotbeds or 

 coldframes. The wheelbarrow is almost 

 necessary where the garden is 50 x 100 ft. 

 and larger, while the hose is almost un- 

 necessarv if the natural moisture is pre- 

 served by prompt and thorough and con- 

 stant cultivation. Where this is not done 

 watering is necessary, either by the port- 

 able hose or by installing a permanent 

 system of overhead irrigation pipes. 



IMPORTANCE OF PROPER TRANSPLANTING 



The rows in most backyard gardens re- 

 mind me of a city tenement. In an effort 

 to grow "loads of stuff" in small space, the 

 industrious city gardener is apt to forget 

 that plants — just as well as human be- 

 ings — need a fair amount of space for 

 proper development. Crowded rows will 

 not and cannot yield the best specimens 

 of the variety. 



The trouble starts when seeds are sown. 

 It is very difficult to judge in the case of 

 fine vegetable seeds, just how much seed 

 should be sown in each row without the 



