8 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
oilier. Now it is not at all needful for the amateur, wlio has 
but a small garden, to conclude lie cannot grow a bit of every- 
thing in it because he can neither plant an orchard, nor devote 
broad tracts, to asparagus, seakale, and the rest of the vege- 
table, delicacies. The most profitable ivay is the best for him 
certainly, for he has not an inch of ground to waste; and the 
most profitable way, to begin with, is to keep the fruits and 
vegetables quite apart. It is common to see in small gardens 
a number of crooked and perverse apple trees dotted here and 
there in delightful irregularity, with crops of cabbage, peas, 
potatoes, etc., between and beneath them. Now that is the 
unprofitable way, and, therefore, the wrong way. The trees 
are constantly injured by . the disturbance and destruction of 
their roots, and hence their ugliness, for they are perpetually 
making distorted growths, and losing the shapely limbs with 
which they began life in the nursery. On the other hand, the 
vegetables grown beneath them are robbed by the trees of 
their due share of rain and sunshine, and as regards the double 
tax upon the soil of the trees and vegetables, the end of it is 
that they starve each other. The tree that produces a peck 
of apples when it ought to produce two or three bushels, can- 
not be said to have the most judicious treatment. The ques- 
tion arises, do the peas, potatoes, etc., grown within its shadow 
and amongst its roots, pay for the defect of the fruit crop. Let 
everyone so circumstanced answer the question in the face of 
experience ; it will be found that the attempt to get both fruit 
and vegetables out of the self-same plot of ground is a mistake, 
because it is an unprofitable mode of managing things. 
It may be said that if we are careful and considerate, the 
trees need not suffer so much as to injure their health, or 
seriously lessen their productiveness. If we could always be 
sure that garden work would be done in a careful and con- 
siderate manner, there might be a plausible defence set up for 
the violation of principle we have now before us. But we 
never can insure the quality of garden work from first to last. 
Men who know better, will actually go grubbing amongst the 
roots of fruit trees, and labour hard to cut great roots away, 
because they interfere with the planting of rhubarb, or cab- 
bages, or something of that sort. When work is done on a 
wrong principle, we cannot expect from an unthinking work- 
man what a workman of some quality refuses us, that is the 
careful and exceptional mode of procedure needful to prevent 
