March, 19 13 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



83 



MMEW 

 VEGETABLE GARDEN 



BY 

 F.F.ROCKWELL 



Photographs by Nathan R. Graves 



ENTHUSIASM — that boundless, impatient maximum as well as for evenly distributed results. It saves 



enthusiasm that comes with the first Spring time in planting and cultivation and it keeps your garden 



days — and a seed catalogue and a planting space (an asset of considerable cold cash value in these 



table, are generally considered the total days of climbing prices for all food stuffs) producing to 



requisites for the home vegetable garden, the limit. It may easily turn out, at the end of the season, 



That supposition may be right — or other- that the hours spent in your vegetable garden have proved 



wise. It all depends upon what sort of a garden you are fully as profitable as any spent in business. The emphasis 



willing to have. Good vegetables alone do not make a is being shifted, these days, from the pleasure of gardening 



good garden; they may be grown to perfection, and it may to the profit of it. 



still be an "an up and down garden" — that's the sort that "modern methods" in gardening 



result from haphazard planting. More lettuce than you How, then, are we to make a plan that will assure these 



can possioly use — even with the help of the chicken yard — maximum results? First of all, we must have some knowl- 



for a month in the Spring, and little or none the rest of the edge of several comparatively recently introduced methods 



Summer; a flood of beans from the first two plantings, trail- which make high efficiency in gardening possible. Among 



ing off into gradually toughening pods, then to none at all these are: Companion-cropping, interplanting, irrigation. 



for several weeks or months, a thing that should be avoided. Now, it may be objected that all these things are as "old 



Instead of this up and 

 down supply you want your 

 vegetables i n reasonable 

 quantities, but throughout 

 the longest possible season 

 — and it is a more difficult 

 task to plan a garden so that 

 the results shall be what 

 they should from this stand- 

 point, than it is to grow big 

 vegetables and plenty of 

 them. Moreover, this work 

 cannot be left until the in- 

 spiration of "planting time" 

 is upon us, — the opening 

 blossoms, the bird songs, the 

 ancestral psychological call 

 to be out and stirring the 

 brown pungent-s c e n t e d 

 earth. It must be done dur- 

 ing the lingering, disappoint- 

 ing days of Winter, when it 

 seems as though the last rem- 

 nants of his spell would 

 never disappear. It must be 

 done, not out in the sunlight 

 and the wind with rake and 

 hoe, but with pencil and 

 paper, figures and careful cal- 

 culations. Yet that is the 

 only way to plan the truly 

 satisfactory garden, and, 

 moreover, that is the only 

 way to plan the garden for 



Well Grown Peppers 



as the hills," and so, in a 

 sense, they are; nevertheless, 

 they have all been recently 

 developed anew, and are 

 making possible a new gar- 

 dening. Take, for instance, 

 the matter of irrigation; its 

 wonderful effects on crop 

 growth have been known al- 

 most as far back as the be- 

 ginnings of agriculture itself. 

 But it has remained for the 

 past decade to see worked 

 out a system thoroughly 

 practical for use on a very 

 small scale, absolutely de- 

 pendable in operation and 

 reasonable in price. Yet such 

 an irrigation system is the 

 most important factor so far 

 discovered in making the re- 

 sults of the garden certain. 

 It is the greatest factor, 

 too, in making possible the 

 carrying out of any garden 

 plan we may make. Without 

 it, in a season of drought 

 and uncertain weather, the 

 schedule will have to be 

 abandoned, no matter how 

 carefully made up, for the 

 crops cannot be made to ar- 

 rive or start on time. "Suc- 

 cession-cropping," "Compan- 



