34 MY GROWING GARDEN 



ever the snow is off. The vetch that now covers 

 another patch with a thick mat of its prostrate 

 stems is also persistently green, and will bloom in 

 purple glory if I do not get it turned under very 

 early this spring. It is better than the rye, the soil- 

 sharps tell us, because it gathers from the air the 

 expensive and essential nitrogen, storing it in 

 little nodules along the roots. As the whole plant 

 is to be turned under, I get this nitrogen to work, 

 and also the humus resulting from the buried 

 herbage. I will thus have a thin underlying muck- 

 pile to be rotting into usefulness for a year or more 

 — for the authorities insist that the full benefit 

 from a turned-under green-manure crop is not 

 obtained until the second year. 



I must ask pardon for writing of "crops" and 

 otherwise as if I were deahng with acres instead of 

 little garden patches! Yet the problems are just 

 the same, save that my desire, at least, is for more 

 intensive culture than is usual in acreage work in 

 rich and wasteful America. 



There is another thing to do these March days, 

 and by all means the most disagreeable of garden 

 operations. It is to begin spraying, with the un- 

 pleasantly strong "dope" requisite to permanently 

 discourage the big-devil scale, named San Jose, 

 and the lesser evil named after the oyster-shell. 



