My July Garden 
By MAY ELLIS NICHOLS 
W E did not go to the country last year till 
almost the middle of July—the tenth, to 
be definite—and every one said it was 
entirely too late to plant a garden. So, indeed, it 
seemed to me, but the difficulty of catering for a 
family table with the nearest green grocer more 
than a mile away tempted me to give the doubt the 
benefit. 
There was plenty of land,—sod—with such a 
luxuriant growth of clover that there could be no 
doubt of its fertility. A plot thirty by forty feet was 
plowed and harrowed, three loads of barn-yard 
fertilizer were added and all was ready for the seed. 
I repaired to a local seed store, but here 
discouragement awaited me. The stock of seed 
was depleted, indeed some kinds quite exhausted. 
After much opening of drawers, emptying of envel¬ 
opes, discussion and delay, I departed with five cents 
worth each of the following seeds: 
Spinach, improved, thick leaves; radishes, early 
long scarlet; parsley, fine triple curled; beets, 
Crosby’s Egyptian; lettuce, Lerry’s early prize head; 
cucumbers, white spine; beans, golden wax; corn, 
country gentleman. To these I afterward added 
ten anemic tomato plants, derelicts of the stock 
raised for the spring planting. I tried to get onion 
“sets,” also, but these were not to be found at all. 
On the advice of the farmer, who plowed the 
land for me, the garden was planted in rows three 
feet apart so that it could be tilled by a horse culti¬ 
vator; this was never done, however. On the twelfth 
of July, 1906, at noon, the last seed was covered, 
the last tomato plant set, and the period of waiting 
began. 
It was hot and dry, and I so feared that my seeds 
would not germinate that for three nights I carried 
water and thoroughly moistened them. On the 
fifth day, however, my fears were set at rest. A filmy 
green line penciled the whole length of the lettuce 
row, and the radishes were also above the ground; 
while in less than a week the tiny red stems of the 
beets were visible. In the meantime the tomato 
plants were feasting on the rich soil and holding 
themselves straight and strong. The parsley was 
the last thing to come up and the only thing—to 
anticipate a little—that we had no use of in anyway. 
Lour or five days after the garden was planted 
there was abundant rain and after that there were 
almost daily showers, so that the goddess who helps 
the brave this time seemed to include the presump¬ 
tuous in her favors. The conditions were ideal, and 
such as could not, of course, be counted on, but the 
results were ideal too. How that garden grew! 
What a thing of beauty it was! Three weeks from 
the day it was planted the lettuce, crisp, juicy, per¬ 
fect was on our table; and from that time till we 
reluctantly left it on the eighth of September, we 
picked all we could use beside distributing it gen¬ 
erously to our friends. On the same day that we 
began to use the lettuce, August 2d, I pulled a 
radish five inches long and as large around as my 
thumb, a pearl of its kind. The radishes, too, 
lasted for several weeks, providing a relish, not only 
for our own table, but for the lunch of the workmen 
who were building a near-by summer cottage. 
The third vegetable ready for use was the beet, in 
the form of greens. These were picked August 14th 
and the spinach was ready August 21st. The 
cucumbers were tasted first August 23d, though they 
might have been used some time before; and August 
24th we ate delicious butter beans from our own 
garden. None of the tomatoes ripened till the first 
week in September, but we had fried the green ones 
and made chow-chow and pickles for a week or two 
previous. Erom about the 20th of August we were 
independent of the green grocer, except for potatoes 
and things we bought to make a variety. We did 
not stay late enough in September to get the benefit 
of the corn. Beside the vegetables we used on the 
table, I put up my winter supply of pickles, both to¬ 
mato and cucumber, extravagantly using the tiny 
little cucumbers, 200 of which I once picked in three 
days. 
As some one is likely to insist that I “count the 
cost,” the items of my garden are as follows: 
Work with team—plowing, etc. $3 15 
Three loads of fertilizer at 25 cents per load... 75 
Seven and one-half hours raking and planting 1 11 
Seeds. 40 
Tomato Plants. 20 
Total. $5 61 
So much for the debit side. In return we had all 
the vegetables we could use for more than three 
weeks and might have had for six, could we have 
stayed to enjoy them. I was relieved of the anxiety 
of making sure of our supply from the grocer, and 
had, in addition, my winter’s store of pickles. If the 
debit side still seems to weigh up the credit, put in 
the other side of the balance all the delight of really 
owning a garden and seeing it grow; the satisfaction 
of viewing the discomfiture of the skeptics; the 
summer’s experience; add this and who will not 
agree with me that the experiment was a success— 
that my garden really paid. 
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