686 
The RURAL NEW-WORKER 
May 24, 1910 
A Woman’s Garden 
How Much Is a Garden Worth? 
Keeping Score. —In a previous exist¬ 
ence I had been a stenographer and book¬ 
keeper in a broker’s office. Now I am an 
amateur farmerette with a half acre of 
land, more or less, and have been doing 
my best to be patriotic by raising cab¬ 
bages, potatoes, etc. Of course I brought 
the habits of the broker’s office with me 
and so have endeavored to put down 
everything in black and white, and bal¬ 
ance the debits and credits, with the pur¬ 
pose of finding a good sum on the profit 
side of the profit and loss account. I 
find it not easy to do that, either with 
gardening or poultry raising, for there 
seem to be many things on which one can¬ 
not place a just estimate. But I have 
done so after a fashion and the result may 
interest both the learned and the un¬ 
learned in such things. 
Planning for Increase. —In 1010 I 
bad a little garden about the size of a 
pocket handkerchief. In 1917 I had a 
large one. and succeeded so well with it 
that passing farmers sat sideways on 
their wagons and viewed it with astonish¬ 
ment. That it was good, and better than 
theirs, if it was better, was probably ow¬ 
ing to the fact, first, that I had a south¬ 
ern slope, and the Spring and Summer of 
that year were cold and rainy, and sec¬ 
ondly'. that I probably put much more 
work into it than they had time for, with 
their gardens. But being puffed with 
pride. I determined that my 1018 garden 
should be be better yet. and laid my plans 
accordingly. I read industriously all the 
helps for the patriotic and the hints for 
the feeble-minded, supplied by our local 
newspaper. 1 listened to all the profes¬ 
sors of agriculture who were on their 
Spring rampage, and attended several 
symposiums, and swallowed a number of 
books and United States Department of 
Agriculture pamphlets, and I found that 
even in the matter of gardening the doc¬ 
tors sometimes disagreed. But wishing 
to do everything in the most up-to-date 
manner, I made my garden on paper first. 
I had the intention, too, of working in¬ 
tensively and raising two crops where I 
could, and saving all the seed I could. 
So I drew to scale a plot of land 120 feet 
long by 42 feet wide, and I divided it into 
four smaller plots with a walk two feet 
wide between each one, and then divided 
each plot into 17 rows, 2 1 {, feet apart. 
Then I numbered my plots A, B. C and D 
and my rows from 1 to 17. Besides this 
large plot I had an asparagus bed. a plot 
which I used for seed beds and later for 
flowers, three red raspberry plantations, 
a small plot of field corn, another of buck¬ 
wheat. put in simply to prepare the new 
ground for something else, another plan¬ 
tation of currants, and a large expanse of 
lawn dotted with young fruit trees. Hav¬ 
ing made my plan I decided to have sweet 
corn in plot A. legumes in plot B. po¬ 
tatoes. tomatoes, cucumbers and other 
salad plants as well as some herbs which 
I wished to experiment with in plot C, 
and roots crops and cabbages in plot D. 
How it Developed. —Row 1 down the 
cast side of the garden in plots A and B 
and part of C was devoted to pole beans, 
as well as the north side, in order to pro¬ 
vide a wind-break and a screen. I in¬ 
tended to plant the first things on the 
cast side and so on chronologically, so 
that the last things planted should be on 
the west side, and half of plot C should 
be devoted to beans and half to peas. So 
on April 28 I sowed some extra early peas 
in row 2 of plot C, and I dug my trench 
very carefully and fined the earth with 
great pains and spaced my seed very 
thinly. Was not seed scarce and ex¬ 
pensive and the world on the verge of 
starvation? There was a little more seed 
than necessary, so a few feet of row 3 
had extra earlies, too. On May 2 Pre¬ 
mium Gem went into the rest of row 0 
and all of row 4. On May 15 I planted 
American Wonder in rows 5 and G. and on 
June 4 Laxton went into row 7. The 
extra earlies came up finely and grew like 
Jack’s beanstalk, and I had peas on 
June 10. The next planting of Premium 
Gem didn’t come up well, and there was 
only here and there a plant. In order to 
have one decent row and not waste ground 
I transplanted all in row 3 into row 4, 
which left a vacant row. The American 
Wonders were just as bad and all the 
plants in row 5 were transplanted to row 
6, thus leaving another vacant row. which 
I had to plant to Little Gem later on, 
and the second planting of American 
Wonder all went into row 3. . I must 
confess that this time, as with later 
plantings of peas and beans, I poured in 
the seed without trying to save it. 
scratched the earth over it with the hoe 
and hurriedly walked down the row on 
top of it. There was no time then for 
science! 
Some Disappointments. —Next my 
Lima beans, which I had carefully placed 
in strawberry baskets full of nice loam 
in the hotbed, all rotted; why, I don’t 
know, and so Laxton peas went into row 
15 where I had intended to plant the 
Limas, and also into row 16. where I had 
planned to put my last planting of string 
beans. This mixed my beans and peas 
in a very disconcerting manner. And 
my schemes were also put out of joint be¬ 
cause my neighbor’s pigeons scratched up 
half the Laxtons, and so row 15 had to 
be transplanted into row 16. In plot C 
there was also trouble, because my neigh¬ 
bors’ hens scratched up all my thyme and 
my Summer savory, and sweet, marjoram 
refused to germinate. Much of this 
trouble with seed, however, may be laid 
to the poor season of 1017, I think. To 
till the vacant spaces some Dwarf 
Horticultural beans went into one row 
and string beans into another, and so 
this brought legumes into the salad plot, 
and must have scandalized the scientific 
educators if they had known it. 
.Successes. —However, it was not all 
misfortune, and by hard work and many 
plantings 1 had about the end of June, in 
spite of a cold, dry May and a hot, dry 
.Tune, a very beautiful garden. I know 
that it was beautiful because my neigh¬ 
bors bragged about it. and brought their 
friends to see it, and when your neighbors 
brag about your garden to their friends 
you can be quite certain that what they 
say is so. My peas and beans were then 
doing as well as could be expected. The 
sweet corn was all up, and I had po¬ 
tatoes blossomed and ripe tomatoes on 
my tomato vines. My roots crops, cab¬ 
bages and other things were doing finely, 
and I felt contented with my fate. 
Some Disappointments. — But a 
drought came, and from that time till the 
middle of August hardly a drop of rain 
fell. There seemed to be some evil spirit 
about it, for I stood on my baked garden 
and saw thunder showers roaring down 
the valley only six miles away, and over 
on the eastern hill saw black clouds pre¬ 
sumably letting buckets descend, and on 
my half acre not a drop, and even uptown 
a mile away they had hard showers, while 
we had done. My heart nearly broke 
watching my peas and beans drying up. 
my cauliflowers turning yellow and my 
squashes limp and lifeless. I stood it as 
long as I could, and then sent for the 
plumber and with iron pipe and hose con¬ 
structed a watering system, and by hard 
work and much watering I saved some of 
my crops, but lost a third of my bush 
beans and nearly all of my pole beans, 
which were a species of Lima. My po¬ 
tato crop was another sad story. I only 
had a little space for them, three rows and 
a part of a fourth. But I soaked the seed 
carefully in corrosive sublimate and it 
came up well and grew finely. They 
grew too finely, for I feared that they 
were all going to tops. Early in the sea¬ 
son I could not get between the rows, 
and they blossomed before my neighbor’s 
potatoes were half grown. Then along 
came a college professor and said I must 
spray them every 10 days till the tops 
died, and I followed his advice explicitly. 
The total crop from three and one-half 
rows, 28 feet long, was 1 j/> bushel, firsts, 
$3. Now will someone please tell me 
what the matter was? I know that about 
July 15 they all laid down their long 
slender stems and gave up the ghost. 
Verdict at the inquest, lice, blight, and 
my neighbor, who is not a college pro¬ 
fessor, says, “too much spraying.” 
Some Unofficial Information. —Au¬ 
gust was a strenuous month. On account 
of the drought my corn and tomatoes all 
ripened at once. An army of grasshop¬ 
pers and green worms appeared and estab¬ 
lished themselves in plot I), and fired ma¬ 
chine guns at my cabbages and cauli¬ 
flower. When in a store looking for 
something to spray with. I met a philan¬ 
thropic Polander who told me some facts 
in natural history that the college pro¬ 
fessor omitted. Perhaps he knew them, 
but if he had told them to me he would 
have advised some new kind of a spray. 
But the Polander said that cabbage 
worms worked after dark and early in 
the morning his wife got up early and 
picked them off by hand, before they had 
retired to their daytime sleep in the in¬ 
tricacies of the cabbage. It was there¬ 
fore worthless to look for them when the 
sun was high. I thought that what a 
Polish woman could do I also could at¬ 
tempt, and so all through August I arose 
every other morning early and picked 
green, slushy cabbage worms from my cab¬ 
bages and dropped them in a tin can 
where they fell with a sickening thud. 
The chickens liked them, but the dew was 
cold. Sometimes my fingers ached with 
the cold and I felt that if anyone earned 
the Distinguished Service Medal for their 
work in August I did. All the praise I 
had, however, was from my Polish neigh¬ 
bor, whom I heard advising his hired man 
to make matrimonial attempts in my di¬ 
rection. But cabbages and cauliflowers 
were unfortunate last year. I bought 
three papers of seed of the former, think¬ 
ing that the first two papers were not 
coming up. Then they did, and I sup¬ 
plied the neighborhood with cabbages. I 
bought three papers of cauliflower seed 
and had only three plants from them, and 
was supplied with a dozen plants by a 
friend. These, on account of the drought, 
were almost a failure. The first ones to 
head branched out like small trees, were 
discolored because the grasshoppers ate 
holes in the leaves, and strong because of 
too much sun and too little moisture. 
The last to ripen, after some rains came, 
and after I had tied up the heads in mo¬ 
squito netting, were fine, but there were 
only a few of them. Having spent the 
mornings in August gathering cabbage 
worms. I spent the forenoons canning 
corn and tomatoes and the evenings spray¬ 
ing. No rest for me that month. 
Poor Help. —I hired but little help 
during the year. There was none to hire, 
and, too, I had a vivid remembrance of 
the season of 1017, when I hired a man 
to plant my potatoes and peas, and he 
planted the former some two feet between 
the rows and some three, and then put the 
peas in the ground in zigzag rows across 
the other end of the garden. He then 
said he wished I had let him lay out the 
garden, as I had not made it even. I 
did get a boy to spade one day, but he 
had to sit down to do the work, and I 
gave him some money to go home. An¬ 
other young fellow appeared one day in 
late Autumn and was suspiciously anx¬ 
ious for a job. But after he had pulled 
up and stored away some bean poles with 
the vines all on, he said he was going 
home and was not coming any more. I 
found afterwards that he came from a 
school for the feeble-minded, which I had 
begun to suspect when he did not object 
to the small amount of cash I gave him. 
Returns. —During the season I was 
careful to keep a daily record of the 
amount of produce gathered, listed at the 
price it was then selling in the markets, 
and carefully estimated. Now I have 
(Continued on page 898) 
The Woman Farmer at Work 
