April, 1 910 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



159 



The Home Vegetable Garden 



By E. P. Powell. 



1= HE country home of two to ten acres almost 

 always has a slope or a swale specially 

 fitted, by Nature, for a vegetable garden. 

 By preference this should lie somewhere 

 below the barn, where the rich drainage 

 can be caught and fed to the plants — for 

 nearly every vegetable is a rank eater. If 

 the slope is sufficient, carry the liquid manure from the barn- 

 yard tank, through the beds, in perforateti tiles — laid a few 

 inches under the surface. This is an ideal way of growing 

 your strawberries also, and anything else that needs spe- 

 cial irrigation. It will be acceptable to celery and lettuce 

 above the rest of the garden stuff, but it is needed in the 

 carrots, beets, salsify and collards. Beans and corn will 

 prefer compost of manure and ashes, with a plenty of 

 humus, and a plenty of stirring with the cultivator. In 

 other words, get your vegetable garden just as rich as pos- 

 sible. 



A southeast or an east slope is bad for fruit trees, but 

 it is the best thing for vegetables. It is all right also for 

 berries and plums, and specially good for grapes and cur- 

 rants. It is not good for gooseberries, and bad as it can 

 be for peaches. Grape trellises, standing ten or twelve feet 

 apart, will admit two or three rows of beets or carrots be- 

 tween, unless you prefer to fill the vacancies with currants. 

 At my Clinton home I grow nearly all my pole beans and 

 my corn in open spaces among my gardens, where, in the 

 trend of the years, I am compelled to throw out raspberries 

 or strawberries. My potatoes also find sufl'icient room in 

 such makeshift spaces. There is always a shifting of plan- 

 tations for berries, and the old beds can be cleaned out best, 

 and the worms destroyed by using them for vegetables, 

 for a year or two. 



The compost used for fruit is equally good for vege- 

 tables, and it should always be in the making. Every bit of 

 waste material should be made use of in this manner. I 

 buy no commercial fertilizers. There are, in my four 

 acres of fruit and vegetables, five piles, always, made up 

 of autumn leaves, coal ashes, barnyard manure, and what 

 ever litter I can lay my fork upon. These compost piles 

 are comminuted once a year, and then are fed to the bushes 

 and plants and roots. Built up, as they ought to be, with 

 alternate layers of loose and solid material, they do not 

 burn up, but disintegrate very slowly — so that no percep- 

 tible ferment can ever be discovered. The result is ninety 

 per cent, saved, instead of ninety per cent, lost, as is the 

 case with ordinary manuring. Applied in November, and 

 plowed under lightly in May, this sort of stuff constitutes 

 a food thirty to fifty per cent, better than commercial fer- 

 tilizers; and that which is not direct food becomes humus, 

 and the humus is invaluable as a mulch, before it becomes 

 soil — as it will all the time be undergoing the transforma- 

 tion into soil. 



We are slovenly, above all things, in this matter of plant 

 food. We allow millions of dollars to go to waste; that is 

 we put it to no use, in the form of garbage piles, weeds, 

 which should be gathered and composted, and autumn 

 leaves which are burned up. All these things should be 

 gathered as positive wealth, and into the piles should go 



our barnyard manure, street waste, the rich washings in 

 ditches, coal ashes from anthracite coal, wood ashes, old 

 plaster and similar materials. Where there is access to 

 muck, and other similar vegetable detritus, these also 

 should be greedily gathered. These piles make your vege- 

 table garden just what it ought to be, immensely rich, and 

 able to give you two or three crops during the summer. As 

 soon as your early peas are off put on beans, for late string 

 beans. Late carrots and beets can also be easily grown, 

 and where you are approaching midsummer you can put 

 in turnips. The celery, of course, may be transplanted 

 quite late in the season, but into the richer spots. You not 

 only want fresh peas, beans, and corn, but you want them 

 for a long season; and you easily can have them for a long 

 season. Peas can be sown, for succession, until the last of 

 June; corn, for succession, from the last of April till the 

 first of July. My custom is to make my first planting as 

 early in April as the ground will permit. If frost nips my 

 beans, I replant, without grumbling. But this frosting is 

 not as frequent as the old farmers will prophesy. I man- 

 age to keep beans in good supply until frost time, which 

 occurs with me in early October; then 1 break down a few 

 poles, and keep by them a few arms-full of straw, or hay, 

 or litter, and by covering them on frosty nights I have 

 string beans until well into November. 



I propose a list of vegetables of the very primest sort, 

 those that I have myself tested, and that will gi\"e absolute 

 satisfaction — I should say up-to-date satisfaction; for in 

 nothing have we improved more steadily than in our vege- 

 tables. I shall include in the vegetable garden the aspara- 

 gus bed, and let me tell you that there is no asparagus 

 equal to the French Giant Argenteuil. This goes under 

 slightly different names, but it is a great improvement over 

 the old sort, besides yielding enormous crops. One or two 

 messes of asparagus do not satisfy a rational housekeeper. 

 It should be on the table every noon for a month or six 

 weeks. The stalks should be tender for six or eight inches 

 in length, and that tough stuff served at boarding houses 

 and hotels, with one eatable inch to a stalk, is an abomina- 

 tion. I set down as one of the finest modern \egetables, 

 for table use, the new carrot. Among the best of these are 

 the Oxheart, the Half-long Scarlet, and for late the St. \'al- 

 lery. The modern beet is another vegetable absolutely 

 revolutionized. The improved Egyptian and Laniers Su- 

 perba are the best for early, and the Perfected Half-long, 

 or Fords, is the best late winter beet. Of the lettuces I do 

 not know one variety that will give more satisfaction than 

 the little Mignonette. It makes solid little balls, and \cr\ 

 quickly. May King and Golden Ciate I ha\e lound to be 

 specially fine. 



Everyone should ha\e a bed of curled-lea\ ed parslc\. 

 and as for spinach I consider it one of the most delicious 

 spring foods. Any radish seed will do; but for spinach 

 plant New Victoria. Those who grow tomatoes should ha\ c 

 the golden and the red on the same plate; take Golden 

 Queen and Livingston's Fa\orite. I always add some of 

 the plum-shaped sorts, for preserving and pickling. Of 

 the squashes the very perfection, for late use. is Deliciou'^, 

 started by Mr. Gregory, who first sent out the Hubbard. 



