36 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
Selecting New Sites and Making Them Produce This Season—Flowers, 
Vegetables and Small Fruits in Place of Stones and Cluttering Weeds 
S PRING is the natural time for new 
activities. The whole world is re¬ 
making, remodeling and replanning now. 
Even the new garden, in spite of all that 
can be said for making it in the fall, is 
generally started in the few weeks fol¬ 
lowing the final departure of Jack Frost 
if you take the time to make it right, 
as a nightly visitor. 
Your spring-made garden, even if it is 
a brand new one, can be made successful 
Unless you do that, you are certain to 
encounter failure, to a greater or less 
degree. With the materials that may be 
required on hand and a helper or two 
to assist with the heavy, rough work, a 
good sized new garden may be made in 
a day under ordinary conditions. But 
it is better to delay the planting of the 
garden a week if necessary and to have 
it prepared just as thoroughly and care¬ 
fully as you know how, than to give it 
“a slap and a lick.” 
Essentials for New Gardens 
Plants may be grown for appearances 
but cannot be grown on them. The most 
experienced gardener can never guaran¬ 
tee success; but there are some simple 
principles and rules which even the en¬ 
thusiastic beginner, with all his prover¬ 
bial luck, must follow to make his 
chances of success probable. It is the 
everyday essentials of i gardening which 
are given in the following paragraphs, 
and he who ignores any of them is in¬ 
viting disappointment if not failure. 
Where a choice is to be had, a slight elevation is preferable 
for the garden, because both the air drainage and the water 
drainage will be better than on any adjacent low-lying ground, 
and also because the garden will show up to better advantage. 
This is especially important in the growing of roses. If the 
garden is to be a thing of beauty in itself, and not merely a 
place in which to grow beautiful flowers, its situation should 
be selected with the idea of having it visible from the porch, 
living-room, or dining-room if possible. If the garden is 
wanted to be a part of the home, instead of a show place, large 
or small, the point of visual approach should be from the house. 
The garden site should be chosen also for convenience. This 
is true whether you expect to grow sweet peas or garden peas, 
sweet corn or corn flowers—that is, if you expect to do your 
own work and really enjoy your garden. Many people have 
the feeling that the vegetable garden should be somewhere 
entirely out of sight. This is a great mistake. With very little 
additional trouble it can be made just as attractive as any 
garden on the place. It is no ruling of nature that keeps 
flowers out of the vegetable garden. 
To take up the practical details of making a new garden, 
one of two conditions is likely to be found existing where it is 
to be established: an old, tough sod where grass has grown 
for years—such as part of a lawn, or the edges of a hay-field, 
or just wild grass—or the bare, uninviting grounds about the 
newly built house. The former is preferable. 
Starting the Vegetable Garden 
As the vegetable garden is usually the first to be made in 
the spring, we will consider that first. If there is a tangled 
mulch of dead grass and weeds over the surface, burn it off 
as clean as possible before you begin operations. Your scien¬ 
tific garden friend may inform you that this is a waste of poten¬ 
tial humus in the soil; it is, but as you have the work to do 
and will also have the weeding to do you can afford to 
humor him and go on with the work. 
When the burning is finished, spread 
on your manure, first, of course, having 
marked off the size of your prospective 
garden plot, being careful to get the 
corners at true right angles. If you 
can’t trust your eye, measure with the 
diagonals, which should be equal. Have 
the piece plowed, if possible. It is best 
the first season to use a garden of this 
kind only for potatoes, corn, vine crops 
and things of that kind. If it is neces¬ 
sary to prepare it for all your garden 
vegetables, and if the sod is so thick or 
the plowman so poor that he cannot get 
all the sod under, it will pay you to 
resort to the process of “skinning” it 
or working it up. Start along one edge 
and take off the sod in squares of a con¬ 
venient size to handle and just thick 
enough to hang together. For this work 
an edger to cut out the pieces and a spade 
or a sod tool to cut under them should 
be used. 
The sod removed should be stacked in 
a square pile, the grassy sides of each 
two layers being placed together. Start 
the pile on a level place and bind it 
carefully. For convenience double piles 
may be made at the ends and edges. The 
sod roots left in the soil wifi furnish 
plenty of humus for the first year, and 
this material after it rots up during the 
summer will make ideal compost for use 
in the frames, greenhouse, gardens made 
in less favorable places, or to put back 
into the same garden next year. The 
ground should be worked, whether plowed or spaded, as deep 
as possible—that is, down to the subsoil unless the latter is 
10" or 12" below the surface. In case the subsoil is only a few 
inches below the surface, plow or spade up 1" or so of it, 
mixing it thoroughly with the other soil. Such soil should be 
worked about 1" deeper each year until it is 6" or 8" deep. The 
addition of some manure and any other available organic mat¬ 
ter is particularly beneficial to shallow soil. Very light, sandy 
soil should be worked rather shallow. If the subsoil also is 
sandy, it will pay you to give the garden a good rolling after 
it is manured or plowed or spaded, before preparing it for 
planting. A new garden always needs and should have more 
manure than a garden that has been used for several years; 
but it is of particular importance, also, that the manure used 
should be old and well rotted. 
The Flower Garden 
The flower garden generally has to be made where it is 
wanted rather than where the soil may be best. Remove the 
sod, if any, in the same way as described above. If the soil 
is poor, bring in good soil to fill and build up the beds. If 
necessary, take out and remove part of the poor soil from the 
beds, adding the new. The beds should not be elevated more 
than 3" or 4" above the surface after they are made. Where 
the new flower gardens are to be made on an already well es¬ 
tablished lawn, so much of this work will not be necessary; 
but if the lawn surface is also “built,” it will probably not be 
deep enough, and 2" or 3" more of the soil must be added to the 
bed. The various annual plants and flowers do not require as 
deep a soil as the perennials, and there is also the opportunity 
of enriching it thoroughly each season. 
Making a Perennial Bed 
The garden for hardy perennials is a permanent investment 
and it will pay to take care in making it. The best way to 
MAKING NEW GARDENS 
F. F. ROCKWELL 
First of all the boundaries of the new 
garden must be laid out with a good 
line and marker 
