HOUSE AND GARDEN 
May, 1915 
353 
the main garden, ideal for a permanent planting like asparagus. 
As it was, the north border of the garden held our asparagus, 
with roots now five years old and impossible to transplant, so 
the West Garden was planted for the first years in six rows 
of corn on the west side and three rows of lima beans on the 
east, using the bean arch scheme so successful the year before. 
During February I was very busy building the barn and chicken 
house. As I did every stick of it myself, from the post foun¬ 
dations to the outside trim, it goes to prove that any commuter 
can amuse himself successfully that way, provided lie will buy 
himself a real saw, not a tool-box one, and a real hammer, not 
a five-and-ten-cent store specimen! The former cuts like an 
angel, with no particular muscular outlay involved, and the latter 
never pounds your thumb nor glances ofif the nail-head and 
maims your left forefinger, as the cast iron variety is sure 
to do. The barn is 12 feet x 18 feet, with a 6 x 8-foot 
concrete porch, and a concrete floor, the whole in keeping 
with the architectural treatment of the main house. Tt 
will accommodate one horse and carriage, and four dogs. 
The second story is a Retreat, used by a certain writer 
when the main house gets too noisy for invoking the Muse. 
It is my “dope” den, photographic studio and literary work¬ 
shop in one; by “dope” being meant filed archives of 
reference pamphlets, facts, figures and philosophy. None 
of these are tolerated in the main library, and they used 
to occupy a dark closet, where chasing a fact to its lair 
involved a day’s work with a dark lantern. 
The door of the barn is 8 feet wide x 7 feet 6 inches 
high, and it will accommodate a small “car,” in lieu of 
horse and carriage (which God forbid!). There is room 
also for garden tools, wheel-hoe, lawn mower, hose reel, 
wheelbarrow and such accessories before the fact which 
used to clutter up cellars and rear halls in the main house. 
It cost $148 for materials, and a contractor would duplicate 
it for you for about $800. 
Let us now turn to the arrangement of the main garden. 
The success of everything in the rear border the year 
before now emboldened me to put in again the trees orig¬ 
inally planned for this space. I accordingly set another Baldwin 
in the angle between the barn and rear trellis, two more Bartlett 
pears, spaced twenty feet between it and the Early Harvest Apple 
tree at the end of the main garden path, and another Black 
Tartarian cherry in the border back of the East Garden, between 
the two Early Harvest apples. This is practically the same plant¬ 
ing as went in there two years ago, all of which died; but this 
time the earth was a foot higher, the soil mellow and sweet and 
well manured, and everything planted in it “went along like a 
house afire.” 
In the new plan you will note fewer sorts of vegetables and 
more rows of each kind. The problem for a commuter’s garden 
is to raise only the sorts which do not require much nursing 
and tending; broad-leaved vegetables, which keep weeds out of 
their own row and only require the wheel-hoe to be run down 
between the rows once a week to keep the weed population 
under. For this reason I omitted all the narrow-leaved vege¬ 
tables—onions, leeks, salsify, carrots (except in a dense bed for 
little ones)—and devoted a good many more rows to the standard 
vegetables, sowing seeds an inch or more apart in the rows and 
thinning to four inches for “greens.” Our strawberry bed, after 
the fruiting season in the previous June and July, had put forth 
such a vast quantity of runners that it was hopeless to try to use 
the wheel-hoe on it, and I had no time for hand weeding. 
So I let it go its way, keeping down the weeds and grass 
with a sickle, besides one or two hand weedings, until the 
sets had rooted firmly and the runners had turned black, 
indicating that the parent plant was through furnishing sap 
to the young sets. Then, in mid-October, l dug up the whole 
bed, separated the sets and old plants from the weed and 
grass roots that came up with them, and I then had more 
than five hundred strawberry plants, including the original 
hundred. I cleared the whole East Garden for them, set 
400 on i l / 2 x ij4-foot spacing, and had 100 left to give 
away. They should be set square and not “staggered,” so 
as to give the wheel hoe a clear run, both across the bed and 
up and down it. 
This made it necessary to find a new place for the tomatoes, 
so I established a yard of thirty-two plants across the main 
path, taking 15 x 25 feet of garden space. Next to them I 
arranged for five rows of beets (125 feet), taking 9 x 25 feet 
of garden space, and, beyond the hot frame, three of turnips 
and three of spinach. The old bean arch ground back of this 
frame was now exceedingly rich soil, not only from the well- 
known nitrogen-producing qualities of beans, but from the 
(Continued on page 372) 
The west garden on June I, showing pole beans and corn. Later the ends of the poles 
were lashed together to make arches 
This is the same garden in August, showing the thirty-seven hills of limas hiding the 8 feet 
of corn. A corner of the farm is also visible 
