
BEETS, Crosby’s Egyptian (Center) 
Early Wonder (Left) 
Detroit Dark Red (Right) 

Extra Feeding 
DON’T DEPEND on organic matter 
only for feeding your vegetables. 
While it has some fertility value, it 
won’t provide enough. Remember 
that vegetables growing in a garden 
are in an artificial environment. You 
don’t want natural growth; you want 
crops to mature as soon as possible, 
and this means extra feeding with 
suitable fertilizers. Properly used, 
chemical fertilizers furnish plant food 
at lowest cost in most readily avail- 
able form. 
DO make provisions for extra feed- 
ings through the summer as plants 
grow and take fertility from the soil. 
When to Use Lime 
DON’T apply lime unless it is really 
needed! It is good, of course, for the 
purpose of breaking up heavy clay 
soil. A good check on the need for 
lime is the way your beets grow. Usu- 
ally a garden soil that will grow good 
beets contains enough lime. If beets 
do poorly, or if sheep sorrel grows 
vigorously, apply about 50 Ibs. of 
hydrated lime or 100 lbs. of ground 
limestone to every 1,000 sq. ft. of 
garden. If you have a pH tester, most 
flowers and vegetables grow well ina 
soil that tests between 6.0 and 7.0. 

Se 
Before You Dig 
Before digging or plowing the garden, 
apply 2% to 3 lbs. of balanced fer- 
tilizer over every 100 sq. ft. of garden. 
Divide fertilizer into two lots, sowing 
one with the wind and the other 

CANTALOUPE, Hale’s Best 
across the wind. Or, better yet, use 
a fertilizer spreader. 
Next, make a mud pie test. Pick up 
a handful of soil and pat it lightly 
into a mud pie or cake. If this can be 
crumbled into loose soil easily, the soil 
is all right to dig. If it hangs together, 
it is too wet: don’t dig. 
Spading the Garden 
The average home garden can be dug 
easily in five or six days, if done in 
stages. Usually, a hand-dug garden is 
in better condition than one that has 
been plowed. Start by digging a 
trench the depth and width of a spade. 
Wheel the dirt from this trench around 
to the other side of the garden, where 
you plan to finish digging. Throw the 
Girt from succeeding rows into the 
trench made by the previous spade 
cut. The last cut is then filled with 
the earth wheeled from the first. 
Spading vs. Plowing 
DON’T allow bad plowing to spoil 
your soil. Many a garden plot has 
been ruined by a heavy tractor that 
worked it too wet. Be sure your soil 
passes the mud pie test before you 
allow a plowman to touch it. Too 
often, regular farm equipment is too 
heavy for working garden soils. 
DON’T work your soil too much. Re- 
member that after you finish digging 
or plowing, your soil has been fluffed 
up and loosened, so plant roots can 
grow through it easily. Every time 
you go over it you are packing it 
down, making it less suitable for 
EGG PLANT, Black Beauty 
Practical answers to every-day 
questions about home gardening 
growing plants. Most inexperienced 
gardeners overdo surface preparation 
by trying to work the surface into a 
fine dust. Clods should be broken up, 
stones rakea off and trash removed, 
within sensible limits. If the soil was 
dug at the right mud pie point, most 
lumps should break up without too 
much additional cultivation. 
DO use a cord or garden line stretched 
across the garden in laying out rows. 
Crooked rows increase the work 
needed. Also, they waste space. Open 
furrows for sowing seed by running 
the end of a hoe handle along a taut 
cord. For most seeds this should not 
be more than 14” deep; 1” deep for 
peas, beans, corn, etc. Fine seeds 
should not be covered more than 14” 
in the furrow. If your soil cakes or 
crusts badly, use clean sand, or a 
mixture of 50/50 sand and leaf mold, 
or peat moss, to cover the seed. This 
loose mixture does not cake and al- 
lows the tender seedlings to break 
through readily. 
Where it is important to catch light 
rainfall, corn, peas, beans, etc. can be 
sown at the bottom of a 3” to 4” fur- 
row, but should not be covered with 
more than 1” of soil. 
A hill is a hole! Many gardeners think 
a “hill” for planting squash, cucum- 
bers and melons is actually a pile of 
earth. But a hill means a shallow de- 
pression filled with rich earth, not a 
mound. This depression catches extra 
moisture that the vine crops need for 
rapid growth. Vine crops will grow 
better if you can dig in lots of well- 
rotted manure or compost underneath. 



