February,1910 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
65 
fundamental requirements of plant life. All this specialized 
information has its use; much of it is very good; but it has no 
place among the instruction papers of the beginner. 
By all means plant a garden of your own if you are so for¬ 
tunately situated that a small piece of ground is available for 
your use. It need not be large. If you are planting your first 
garden, the chances are that you will grow more on a 50 x 100 foot 
lot, or even one of less area, than upon one four times that size. 
And it need be no special sort of soil, nor have any particular 
“exposure.” A light, sandy loam and a southeastern slope are 
preferable, but they are not at all essential. 
Do not be so improvident as to prefer spending small sums 
of money for vegetables every week in the year, rather than laying 
out a few dollars now for seeds and fertilizer. Do not be averse 
to taking a little pleasant and healthy exercise, daily if possible, 
which the work required by a small garden will give you. You 
will not only have better vegetables, but a keener appetite with 
which to enjoy them. 
Let us suppose, then, that you pass the excellent resolution to 
have a garden of your own this year. The first thing to do is to 
select a garden site. It should be near by, so that you can step 
right out into it if possible. Pick out a spot that will begin to 
warm up in the very first spring days, sloping to the south or east 
if you can find one; or south of some building. Even an old 
wall, bank or fence to the north will give you a surprising amount 
of shelter. Don’t be too ambitious about the size of it. You 
will absolutely get more from a tenth of an acre thoroughly 
cultivated than from an acre indiffer¬ 
ently cared for, and with half the ex¬ 
pense, fuss, and worry. 
As to soil, the nearer you can come 
to a light, sandy loam, the kind that 
breaks up and crumbles all to pieces when 
you pick up a handful of it, the better. 
But as stated above, such a soil is by no 
means essential. The treatment of other 
soils, to make them as near the ideal as 
possible, will be taken up in a later ar¬ 
ticle, as will also the question of ferti¬ 
lizers and their application. The thing 
that you should get to work on now, is the 
planting plan. 
Don’t leave the planning of your gar¬ 
den till you are ready to put the seeds in 
the ground, and then go at it haphazard. 
The beginner is apt to start in with his 
packets of seeds, plant the entire con¬ 
tents of each as far as it will go, all at 
the same time, and congratulate himself 
upon having the job done. It is—and 
so is his chance of having a satisfactory 
garden! A little careful thinking will 
save you much trouble. You should 
determine the quantity of each vegetable 
you are likely to use, and try to grow 
enough of each, and no more. And it is 
just this that the planting plan will en¬ 
able you to do. 
Take a large sheet of writing paper 
and a ruler. Use a scale of one-fourth or 
one-eighth of an inch to the foot, and 
rule off a space the size of your garden. 
Rows fifty feet long will be about right for 
the ordinary garden. We will take this 
length to figure with, and it may be 
changed in proportion, where rows of 
that length are not convenient. In a 
very small garden it will be better to make the rows, say, 25 
feet long, the aim being to keep the row a unit, and have as few 
broken ones as possible. In the plan herewith, we have sup¬ 
posed the garden to contain vegetables only. If berries and fruit 
are to be grown, give them a space to themselves. 
You will notice that crops that remain for several years, 
such as rhubarb and asparagus, are kept at one end. Next come 
such as will remain a whole season — parsnips, carrots, onions and 
the like. And finally those which will be used for a succession of 
crops—peas, lettuce, spinach, radishes. The space given to each 
variety is allotted according to the proportion in which they are 
usually used. If you happen to have a special weakness for peas, 
and an aversion to onions, keep these and similar tastes in mind 
when laying out your planting plan. 
For the amateur in gardening one of the most bewildering 
questions to settle is what varieties of the various vegetables to 
plant. It is hard enough if he takes one seed catalogue and tries 
to solve the problem. But if he receives half a dozen, as will 
likely be the case, he will find a hopeless task when he attempts 
to make his selection according to the contradictory descriptions 
of what have come to be called “standard” varieties, and the 
eulogies of “novelties.” Happily some seedsmen are beginning 
to see that this habit of unreasonable exaggeration is a mistaken 
policy, and I notice that one large house this year states in the 
advertisement for its calatogue, that it “contains the least extrava¬ 
gant claims of any seed catalogue in America”!—and I believe 
this good example will be followed extensively. I shall there¬ 
fore in attempting to give suggestions 
which will be a help to the inexperienced 
vegetable grower, confine myself to those 
varieties which have proved themselves 
superior, under general conditions, and 
which are by far the more certain to 
give satisfactory results. I do not mean 
by this that all new varieties should 
be taboo. It is extremely interesting to 
experiment with them. By all means 
try a few novelties—but for the first year 
try them only. 
In passing, I want to emphasize as 
strongly as possible that always it is 
cheaper to buy the best seed than to have 
any other kind given to you. Buy your 
seed by mail from one of the many depend¬ 
able houses whose reputation you know. 
Do not allow yourself to be allured by 
convenience or by the beautiful litho¬ 
graphed packets, displayed in hardware 
stores and grocery windows, into buying 
the class of seeds sold in this way. In 
some cases you may get good seeds, but 
in many you will surely repent your folly 
—when it is too late. And in any case it 
is an expensive method of buying, and 
one by which you can seldom get just 
what you want. 
The varieties listed have all proved 
themselves “tried and true” in most 
sections of this country. The few which 
are of recent introduction have won at 
once, the rank of standards, as new va¬ 
rieties sometimes do. Where several va¬ 
rieties are mentioned, 1 give them in the 
order in which, as a rule, they will be 
ready for use. They are of course se¬ 
lected, first of all, for quality, not for 
(Continued on page xvi) 
IQ i5 20 
23 
30 35 40 43 30 
RHUBARB-Z 
Ip 
8 
Is 
s 
SEED-BED 
A5PARAGUA-2 
POLE; BEAA3-Z 
TOMATOfcA-1 
CABBAGE- 
PKOCOLLI- 1 
CAU LI BLOWER,EARLY-1 
PEPPERS —1 
BRUSSELS SPROUTS’-1 
EGG-PLAMT -1 
CELERY-1 
LEEKS’ - g 
CARROTS-4 
PE ETC ?-4 
TURHlPP-ij 
RUTABAGA- 4; 
far^mTp^-i 
CORN -4 
PEA 5-5 
BUPH EEAN5-3 
LETTUCE-2 
OMIQM EfE-'AzB — 1 
MU3KM ELO/NS - G Hi lls 
PUMPK1MS-4H 
WINTER PQUA5H-5H 
CUCUMDERB-TH.lls 
WATERMELOJN5- 5H 
SUMMER 5QUASH,BUSH-<3H 
SUMMER SQUASH,VINE- 5H 
A garden planned thus will supply a family 
of five with summer and winter vegetables 
in plenty. Numbers indicate rows or hills. 
The scale in feet is shown at top and side 
