
Practical answers to every-day 
questions about home gardening 
This is a seed catalog you can keep on using long after you've bought 
and planted your seed! 
Tt is jammed with down-to-earth facts every gardener needs to know. 
Even old-timers will find help here. You'll find most of these facts 
grouped under the heading “How? When? Where? Why?” Read them 
carefully, keep them handy—and us 
Location, soil and layout of the vese- 
table garden may be fixed by the land 
you have. You can, however, improve 
many things about that land if you 
have two basic requirements: (1) at 
least 6 hours of sunshine daily and 
(2) reasonably good soil, free from 
tree roots, subsoil and rubbish fill. 
Is your soil right? 
Heavy clay should be broken up by 
manure or other organic matter you 
can spare. Fertilizers, however, should 
be relied upon to feed crops for a 
good harvest (see pase 34). 
The high cost of guessing 
Substitute headwork for arm and back- 
materials — and labor—because you 
plant only what you need. When you 
plant by guess usually you plant too 
much. You must take care of the 
extra planting until harvest time be- 
fore you see it won’t be needed. If 
you underestimate your needs, then 
you don’t have the food you need. 
See Page 18. 
e them all through the year. 
New ideas on garden layout 
1) .D.re tor pest control promises “to 
change the whole scheme of garden 
layout. We can now divide vegetables 
into two groups — one to be dusted 
with D.D.T. and the other to be left 
undusted. The D.D.T. plot should be 
on the lee side so that wind will not 
drift from it into those which should 
not be dusted. 
This puts the following vegetables on 
the side away from the wind—bush 
and pole beans, limas, beets (unless 
you want to eat the thinnings as 
greens), carrots, sweet corn, eggplant, 
okra, onions, parsnips, peas, peppers, 
radishes, tomatoes and turnips (again, 
only if you don’t eat the greens). 
Facing the wind should be the vege- 
tables not to be dusted, including 
Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, Chinese 
cabbage, collards, cucumber, endive, 
kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, muskmelon, 
parsley, pumpkin, rhubarb, spinach, 
squash, Swiss chard and watermelon. 
In general, rows get better distribu- 
tion of sunshine if they run north and 
south. If this arrangement isn’t neces= 
sary, better put corn and other tall 
crops to the north of the shorter 
crops. Sweet corn should not be 
planted in one or two long rows, put 
(see page 14). 
in several short rows 
Working your soil full time 
Even if you have ample room, it will 
pay to consider intercropping, catch 
cropping and succession cropping. In 
jntercropping, short season crops go 
between slower, growing plants that 
occupy the land all season. For in- 
stance, plant early lettuce between the 
tomato plants, and harvest it before 
the tomatoes need all the room. 
In catch cropping we plant an early 
crop on land before the main crop 
goes in. In succession cropping the 
main crop comes first, as for in- 
stance a crop of snap beans to be 
followed by late turnips. These tricks 
use space efficiently and also reduce 
the number of rows we have to plant. 
Too, in this way, we can broadcast 
fertilizer before plowing or digging 
rather than applying it along the row 
when the plants are partially grown. 



Don’t plant i 
right for gardening that can’t pass 
the “mud pie” test. To make a 
mud pie test, pick up a handful of 
soil and squeeze it slightly. If it 
balls or packs, it is too wet to work. 


Don’t apply lime unless it is really 
needed. Usually @ soil that will 
good beets is alt right. If 
beets do poorly and grow irregu- 




limestone 
feet of garden. If you have 
most flowers and 








BEANS, Fordhook eT 

CORN, Golden Cross Bantam (Top) 
: Jona (Center) 
towell’s Evergreen (Bottom) 

| eS: Tendergreen 



BEANS, Plentiful 
CUCUMBERS, Marketer | op) Ta 
. i sf 
Straight Eight Sane z 
BROCCOLI, Italian Green Sprouting 
