Your Garden 
Location and Soil 
Your family vegetable garden should be 
located as near the house as possible. These 
important points should be considerd in 
locating your garden: 
(1) It should be convenient to the house, 
water, and tools. 
(2) Choose the best soil available. 
(3) Locate the garden where power ma- 
chinery can be used. 
(4) It should be away from trees and 
buildings. 
(3) Choose a spot where the soil is well 
drained. 
The size of the family garden will de- 
pend on the size of the family, the amount 
of time you have to care for it, and the 
amount of canning, freezing, and storing 
to be done. It is more practical to do a 
good job with a small garden, than a 
poor job with one that is too large to care 
for adequately. 
The Garden Plan 
Perhaps one of the most important rea- 
sons for planning a garden is to stretch 
the harvest season so you can get a con- 
tinuous supply of fresh vegetables from ear- 
ly spring to late fall. Spinach planted in the 
fall will live through the winter and can 
be picked in the spring. Careful planning 
will decrease the necessity for canning, 
freezing, and storing great quantities of 
food. Vegetables picked fresh through 7 
or 8 months of the year not only provide 
a fresh source of vegetables for the family 
table, but decrease the amounts needed for 
preserving. 
In planning the garden you will want 
to consider the size of the area available, 
Richmond, Virginia 
the needs of the family, and their likes and 
dislikes. Keep these points in mind when 
you take pencil and paper and start to 
draw the plan. A rough sketch will do, but 
it must be fairly accurate to be useful. 
Make the plan to scale if possible . . . for 
instance a scale of 14 inch to 1 foot. Out- 
line the shape of your garden, list the length 
and width, space between rows, names of 
vegetables to be planted in each row, and 
the names of late vegetables that will fol- 
low the early ones. 
Your paper plan may look something 
like the sample plan on page 54. These 
nine points should be considered while 
drawing the plan. 
1. Perennial crops such as asparagus, 
strawberries and rhubarb should be 
located at one side of the garden. 
2. Tall-growing crops such as corn must 
be kept away from small crops like 
beets and carrots, to avoid shading. 
3. Provide for succession crops, a fall 
garden, small fruits and over-wintered 
crops to mature early in the spring. 
4. Early planted, fast-growing, quick- 
maturing crops should be grouped to- 
gether. Examples: radishes, lettuce, 
early cabbage, scallions, ete. 
5. Provide plenty of vegetables for can- 
ning, freezing and storing. 
6. Do not overplant new varieties, vege- 
tables which the family does not like, 
or too much of any one vegetable at 
one time. 
7. Rows should follow across the slope . 
(on the contour) in hilly areas. 
8. Make sure the plan provides the best 
spacing between rows for the method 
of cultivation that you intend to use 
(hand, tractor, horse). 
9. Run rows north and south if possible, 
to prevent plants from shading one 
another. 
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