18 
House & Garden 
PREPAREDNESS AND THIS YEAR’S KITCHEN GARDEN 
Plans and Preliminary Work for the Home Garden of 100 % Utility—Necessary Space for Specified 
Yields—Early Seed Shopping, Keeping Records, and Other Essential Details 
WILLIAM C. McCOLLOM 
I N some ways gardening is but little different 
from other lines of endeavor; it pyramids 
rapidly upon its own successes, but fails even 
more quickly when adversity or poor accom¬ 
plishment turns the balance the other way. 
That is one reason why we should plan our 
gardens with care. Mrs. Jones’ garden may be 
ideal for Mrs. Jones’ requirements, but you and 
I must plan for our own individual needs. We 
may beg, borrow or steal considerable knowl¬ 
edge from the experiences of others, but the 
first and most important work for us is to get 
something that fits our requirements. A gar¬ 
den too large never succeeds, while a garden 
too small is very disappointing. It must be 
admitted, however, that a small garden well 
managed is much to be preferred to a large one 
where carelessness and indifference prevail. 
Advance Planning 
Plan ahead, order ahead, work and harvest 
ahead. No really good gardens are the result 
of an overnight inspiration, even though many 
magazine articles on the subject would have 
you believe otherwise. Who for one moment 
thought when those gray-clad hordes swept 
through Belgium and northern France in the 
late summer of 1914 that the preparation for 
the drive dated back only to the killing of the 
Crown Prince of Austria on June 28th? Its 
failure can be attributed only to attempting the 
impossible; and the same is true of gardening. 
How large a garden must you have ? 
As a basis for our figures we will take a 
family of five, a good average American house¬ 
hold. What would be a reasonable allowance 
for a family of this size 
based on yearly consump¬ 
tion ? A garden is not only 
a summer visitor; if prop¬ 
erly planned and managed 
there is not a day in the 
entire year when good, 
wholesome vegetables are 
not available for your 
table. 
Potatoes are a staple 
crop. The average pro¬ 
duction of the United 
States prior to the war 
was about 300,000,000 
bushels. This would mean 
approximately three bush¬ 
els for every person in the 
country, or fifteen bushels 
for our family of five. 
How much ground does it 
take to produce fifteen 
bushels of potatoes? The 
average production is in 
the neighborhood of 100 
bushels per acre, though in 
home gardens close plant¬ 
ing and intensive cultiva¬ 
tion should give us a yield 
of 200 busheis, or about 
one pound of potatoes to 
every foot of drill. This 
would mean 900' of drill, 
or a space about 45'x50'. 
This figure is very elastic. 
Small carrots keep best in jars; the 
larger ones require more cooking 
as favorable growing conditions will reduce 
the area required to grow the necessary fifteen 
bushels, and poor conditions mean reduced yield 
and more space to produce a given amount. 
Other garden crops can be figured on a simi¬ 
lar basis. One row of bush beans 50' long 
should produce about 5,000 pods. This is 
based on average yields rather than bumper 
crops. About fifty beans will fill a pint meas¬ 
ure; therefore a row of 50' will supply us with 
one hundred meals of one pint, or half that 
number of quarts. Beans must be used while 
fresh, or canned for future use. It is evident, 
then, that when planning our garden we must 
take into consideration the productive value of 
the various crops. In the February number 
this matter will be taken up more in detail. 
If properly managed a garden 50' square 
should produce all the vegetables that our 
standard family could consume. That means 
one or more vegetables for every day of the 
year, in summer fresh from the ground and in 
winter via the pantry shelf route. This is by 
no means a theory, but a simple problem in 
mathematics. Your garden is usually over in 
late September; it will be seven long months 
before it will again be producing. Consequent¬ 
ly, we should have stored on the pantry shelves 
when snow flies not less than 225 cans of our 
summer product. 
Potatoes, of course, were not included in our 
50' garden. Additional space will be required 
for them, and as most small gardens are lack¬ 
ing in area these vegetables are usually pur¬ 
chased for the winter. All other forms of root 
crops, however, were included in our garden, 
and while it is always a good practice to can 
the surplus of these crops it is also advisable 
to make a special sowing of some of them in 
late summer for the express purpose of storing 
them for the winter. 
An Orderly Plan Essential 
Start in gardening with 
a cool determination to 
have a good garden. Run 
it on a budget system the 
same as enterprising busi¬ 
ness men adopt. Make a 
small sketch plan of your 
garden and see if you can¬ 
not arrange the crops ad¬ 
vantageously; see that the 
tall crops do not shade the 
smaller ones; have the 
rows run north and south 
if possible; make the 
space more attractive by 
the addition of flowers, 
fruits and other means of 
ornamentation. You will 
be surprised how much 
more productive your gar¬ 
den will prove simply be¬ 
cause it does arrest your 
interest. The much fre¬ 
quented garden is the pro¬ 
ducer; the hidden garden 
behind the neglected 
hedge, which is more of 
an incident than a definite 
purpose, is always a fail¬ 
ure. Ten dollars spent in 
the improvement of the 
surroundings will give 
The pantry shelf route to midwinter Mental attitude and garden success 
vegetables calls for enough planting are closely related. The work should 
to yield abundantly be pleasure, not drudgery 
