200 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
June, 1912 
Beans are one of the most important of all the succession crops that may be planted in the Summer 
Summer Work in the Vegetable Garden 
By F. F. Rockwell 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves 
oq| AVE you ever watched a heavy tide come 
j| in along a rocky shore? ‘The big green 
waves are all fuss and fume; they tumble in 
over one another in no end of a hurry to get 
as far over the strand as possible—one 
would think that there never had been such 
a tide, that never again would the barren sands and the 
naked rocks be visible. ‘Then after a few hours one retraces 
his steps to find that all the turmoil has subsided. ‘There 
are the hot dry sands and the blistering rocks, for all the 
world as though the blinking sea had never moved an eye- 
lash, or shaken its hoary mane in a wild determination to 
subdue the imperturbable shore. 
There are many people whose gardening makes me think 
of the ebbing and flowing tide. Every Spring they are wild 
enthusiasm; the ground will not thaw soon enough for them; 
the seeds are too slow in coming up; they insist on putting 
their tomato plants out early enough to get nipped by the 
late frost. And then, along in June, you can look over the 
fence a dozen times a day without seeing anyone in the 
garden and by July the weeds are having things their own 
way, and never a hoe or rake disturbs the hot baked surface 
of the soil. 
Such a garden is bound to be two 5 hide a failure. The 
momentum of the Spring start carries it along for a while, 
but by Autumn, when it should be at its height, there is 
hardly a vegetable to be gathered, and during the long 
Winter, when there should be a plentiful supply of many 
vegetables in the cellar, every blessed thing has to be bought 
from the green-grocer. It is not only largely a failure, but 
a great extravagance, for all the manuring, ploughing, spad- 
ing, and work of preparation is bound to be, to a great ex- 
tent, wasted. 
For such a condition there is absolutely no necessity. A 
little forethought and systematic work—not nearly the 
amount required to start the garden—would have made a 
cornucopia of plenty where now is only a seed plot. 
The Summer garden work, to be followed up effectually, 
must be to some extent systematized. It may be kept track 
of easily along five distinct lines: (1) Cultivation, (2) 
Late planted crops, (3) Succession crops, (4) Fall and 
Winter crops, and (5) Fighting insect pests. In this way 
it becomes a simple matter to keep track of the numerous 
things to be done, and to attend to doing them on time, 
which is the vitally important thing. 
First of all, and generally most neglected of all, comes 
Summer cultivation. ‘The gardener who persists in clinging 
to the outworn idea that as long as he keeps his vegetable 
rows free of weeds his crop is properly cultivated must be 
content to see his neighbor leave him hopelessly behind. To 
some gardeners, weeds are a blessed salvation: if it were 
not for the cultivation given the soil in getting the weeds 
out, their crops would stand still all Summer. Thorough 
cultivation—entirely aside from the incidental matter of re- 
