84 
House & 
Garden 
THE SUCCULENT VEGETABLES OF SPRING 
Plant Early and Pluck Early Is the Rule for Gardeners 
Who Want Tender Vegetables 
JOSEPH HENRY SPERRY 
L ET us put ourselves in the place of 
an amateur gardener who has to do 
the best he can without the valuable 
aid of a small greenhouse or hot bed or 
even a cold frame, and who has simply a 
goodly garden plot kissed by the sun and the 
winds and watered by the dew and the rain. 
Here it is and he is going to try to grow 
as many high quality early vegetables as in¬ 
telligent effort will produce. 
He has prepared his garden as early in 
the Spring as the ground can be worked by 
digging it deep, pulverizing the soil well, 
and fertilizing it freely. Not a day is al¬ 
lowed to pass, the weather being even mod¬ 
erately favorable or endurable before he be¬ 
gins to sow the seeds which in good time 
will spring up and grow into tender, tooth¬ 
some vegetables for his family table. 
It is a garden paradox that the most 
delicate and tenderest vegetables are pro¬ 
duced from early to mid-spring when the 
weather is by no means tender, and frosts 
are not uncommon, and cool rains are fre¬ 
quent, and even flurries of snow appear, 
and when the nights are still nearly as long 
as the days, and that vegetables of the same 
kinds equally delicate cannot be produced 
when the long, warm, dry, delicate days, 
we may call them, of late spring and early 
summer are with us. In short, vegetables 
which will endure a few degrees of frost, 
when young, when grown in a temperature 
of no more than 8° to 18° above the freez¬ 
ing point and in ten or eleven hours of 
darkness are of a superior quality. This 
is the reason why we plant early to get ten¬ 
der, delicate vegetables, plant even when 
the air of early Spring is raw and chilly, 
and our fingers get a bit numb while sowing 
the seeds. Almost every year since boyhood 
I have planted or helped to plant a vegetable 
garden and have planted it early, and the 
results have almost always justified this 
practice. 
The kinds of vegetables which we may 
plant early are by no means few. Here is 
the array: beets, Crosby’s Early Egyptian 
and Early Wonder; Swiss chard, Giant 
Lucullus; cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield, 
Early Spring; cauliflower, Snowball; car¬ 
rots, Early French Forcing, Chantenay; 
lettuce, Mignonette, Boston Market (White 
Seeded Tennis Ball), Big Boston; kohl¬ 
rabi, White Vienna; parsley, Champion 
Moss Curled; peas, Dwarf Varieties, Lax- 
tonian, Sutton’s Excelsior, Nott’s Excelsior; 
Tall varieties, Prosperity (Tradus), 
Ihomas Laxton; Radish, Early Scarlet Tur¬ 
nip; onions, from seeds, White Portugal 
or Silver Skin, from sets, White (grown 
from White Portugal), Yellow (grown 
from Yellow Danvers); turnips, Early 
White Milan; and some of the novelties. 
The wise amateur gardener buys the best 
seeds of each kind; he knows that the dif¬ 
ference in cost between high bred and low 
bred seeds is negligible. If, indeed, he is 
of an economical turn of mind, he scrimps 
in some of his other expenses but not in his 
seed expenditures; if he notes two or three 
strains of the same variety of seed offered 
in a seedman’s catalogue he selects the best 
as far as he can judge from the catalogue 
description, and pays the highest price; he 
is not possessed with the worse than silly 
notion that a seed catalogue is a publication 
in which seedsmen give exaggerated descrip¬ 
tion of the products of their seeds; he knows 
that this is not true. Novelties? Yes, he 
buys a few novelties each year, because the 
intelligent gardener is a progressive man; he 
feels that there may be improvements in 
varieties of vegetables, just as there are 
yearly improvements in the kind of auto¬ 
mobile he drives. He knows that many of 
these novelties in seeds are, perhaps, only 
old varieties bred up by intelligent selection, 
but brought up to such a point of perfection 
that in quality they are far away above 
their parent variety. 
The amateur buys plenty of seeds and 
sows them rather thickly. He knows that he 
allows to stand and grow only a small per¬ 
centage of the plants springing from the 
seeds which he sows, that in a sense the best 
of the seeds planted and coming up are 
wasted, and that this, except in the care 
of the transplanted plants, cannot well be 
(Continued on page 146) 
- 50' 
o 
Early 
CABBAGE 
C A U L 1 FLOWER. 
'/2 
/2 
Qouf 
CAB BAG E 
1 
C E L E R.Y 
2 R°~ 
- 
C AULI FLOWER. 
1 
'ts 
LETTUCE (P) 
1 
CAR.R.OTS 
l 
WA 0 1 S H 
LETTUCE 
£ 
1 'll 
•• s 
BEETS. 
2 * S 
BEETS 
2 
”S 
CAU LI F LOWER. 
1 ’ 
C A R.R.OTS 
K O H R. A a 1 
T U R M l P 
<7- 
CABBAGE 
1 " 
T U R. N IP 
S P 1 N N A C M 
1 
LEEK 
A ■■ 
° N,0N SETS 
ONION 5 & 
A •• 
3/z •• s 
PAR.SN IP 
. 
3 " S 
c 
SALSIFY 
K) 
SWISS CHAR.D • . . !„ 
<7* 
BRUSSELS SPROUTS 
1 " 
I 
ysSfiva,rp 
PEAS 
4 
•■s 
TU R.N 1 P S 
3 " s 
LETTUCE 
i 
0 
$ 
O 
- 
(dEarly 
C 0 FUN 
3 
-s 
< 
Tall 
PEAS 
3 "s 
- 
o 
Early 
POTAT OE S 
2 
- s 
Julu ] ‘t 
n Turnout 
COR.N 
M E L 0 N S 
© © © © @ 
POLE BEANS 
POLE LIMAS 
COR.N 
■4 R.ou/s 
Daarf BEANS 2 FLoojs 
2 CELER.Y 
3* OT 
5 PEAS 
LIMA BEANS / R.ouj 
(n 
Dwary PEAS 
CUCUMBER.S 6 Hills WATER.MELLON 4 Hills 
C=> O C3 £3 CSS CSs rgi (23) 
—------- Before Cucumbers 6 kAetions _ — 
. TOMATOES 
CD © (V) (O 0©C2>(!3 # (?)<£>c5>0 0 0 <£)<£) 
16 Plants 
PEPPER.S do) 
0 & 0 0 000(5$ 
EGO PLANT HO) 
0 0 0 0 6 6 0 0 6 6 
--------- D*a.rf PEAS ------- 
SUMMER. SQUASH 6 Hulls WINTER. SQUASH 4 Hills 
cp cr e cp cp cp. cp cp cp cp 
- -.-—— Before Tta-nitriy Squash 
Ln 
This vegetable garden is designed for a space 102' x SO' , divided into two sections by a path. In 
the right hand plot are grown most of the permanent crops — cucumbers, melons and squashes which 
do not mature till late in the summer; in the left hand plot there is more room for succession 
crops, to follow those that are finished by late spring 
