April, 1918 
Product Value. 
25£ lbs. Carrots . .75 
Total product $23.71 
Less cost 11.30 
Net profit $12.41 
I don’t know much about the value 
of vegetables, so I asked one of the 
leading market gardeners of our town 
to set down the value of each item on 
the basis of the prices made to his cus- 
tomers during the past season. The 
figures are his, and I think that they 
will appear right to those of you who 
buy throughout the summer. 
This leaves a balance in favor of the 
garden of $12.41, after charging it up 
Slower (Brower 
with my time at thirty cents per hour 
and all other expenses including $3.60 
for tools and stakes on hand for next 
year. No irrigation or any unusual 
methods were employed. If there is 
any secret in my success it is in the 
unusual amount of manure used, two 
wagon loads. But in most towns, this 
is still a waste product, and in the 
larger towns street sweepings, one of 
the most valuable of all, can be had for 
the hauling. There is certainly magic 
in it when applied in liberal quantity 
and well mixed with the soil. Rake 
cultivation as soon as the ground dried 
after each rain, was another important 
matter. A wholesome twenty-minute- 
39 
before-breakfast exercise preventing 
the weeds from ever showing their 
heads and keeping the ground so mel- 
low that most of the season I could 
thrust my hand down to the wrist in 
the soil. 
I have had a family garden all my 
life and always used a good deal of 
manure and elbow grease, but this little 
experience with a surplus of both has 
revealed to me as never before the 
possibilities of heavily manured, well 
tilled soil. The size of the garden is 
not what counts so much. If you lack 
ground put on more manure and more 
elbow grease. Give them both a trial 
next summer. 
A hardy, free-flowering shrub well adapted to planting in borders and for screening unsightly fences, outbuildings, etc. 
Known to botanists as Sambucus Canadensis; to everybody else as common Elder. 
(From Wisconsin Horticulture, published by Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, Madison.) 
Planting Sweet Peas. 
Several years ago I read somewhere 
about a certain successful gardener 
who told the secret of his ability to 
secure a very abundant yield of gar- 
den peas every year. His method was 
to dig a deep trench, make the bottom 
of it very fine and fill in several inches 
of old, rotten manure, the older and 
blacker the better ; then plant the pea 
seeds directly on the top of the manure 
and cover with a couple of inches of 
fine soil and firm well. It was with 
some misgivings that I ventured to test 
the method, but I was agreeably re- 
warded with an unusually large crop 
of peas, and the next year I tried it out 
on the sweet peas also, and found that 
it gave fully as good results. From 
several years’ experience I am con- 
vinced of its value, and can recommend 
it highly. 
There are several important rules to 
be remembered in growing sweet peas 
that, unheeded, may cause failure 
whatever the method followed. 
Plant very early. It is highly im- 
portant that they be planted as soon as 
the ground can be worked in the spring, 
or better still, late in the previous 
fall. 
Don’t plant in the same soil succes- 
sively, and don’t plant in poor soil and 
expect a good crop. 
Don’t plant too thickly. For or five 
inches apart is close enough. The 
vines will then be heavier and more 
productive. 
Keep well watered in dry weather. 
Cut the blooms every day or two and 
do not allow any to go to seed if you 
want them to continue flowering. 
H. G. Reading. 
