Home Vegetable Gardening
A Complete &
Practical Guide To The Planting & Care Of Vegetables,
Fruits & Berries
Chapter 3: Requisites of the
Home Vegetable Garden
In deciding
upon the site for the home vegetable garden it's well to
dispose once and for all of the old idea that the garden
"patch" must be an ugly spot in the home
surroundings. If thoughtfully planned, carefully
planted and thoroughly cared for, it may be made a beautiful
and harmonious feature of the general scheme, lending a touch
of a comfortable home that no shrubs,
borders, or flower beds can ever produce.
With
this fact in mind we will not feel restricted to any part of
the premises merely because it is out of sight behind the barn
or garage. In the average moderate-sized place there will not
be much choice as to land.
It will be necessary to
take what is to be had and then do the very best that can be
done with it.
But there will probably be a good deal of
choice as to, first, exposure, and second, convenience. Other
things being equal, select a spot near at hand, easy to
access. It may seem that a difference of only a few hundred
yards will mean nothing, but if one is depending largely upon
spare moments for working in and for watching the garden — and in
the growing
of many vegetables the latter is almost as important as the
former — this matter of convenient access will be of much
greater importance than is likely to be at first recognized.
Not until you have had to make a dozen time-wasting trips for
forgotten seeds or tools, or gotten your feet soaking wet by
going out through the dew-drenched grass, will you realize
fully what this may mean.
Exposure
But the thing of first
importance to consider in picking out the spot that is to
yield you happiness and delicious vegetables all summer, or
even for many years, is the exposure. Pick out the "earliest"
spot you can find — a plot sloping a little to the south
or east, that seems to catch sunshine early and hold it late,
and that seems to be out of the direct path of the chilling
north and northeast winds.
If a building, or even an
old fence, protects it from this direction, your garden will
be helped along wonderfully, for an early start is a great big
factor toward success. If it is not already protected, a board
fence, or a hedge of some low-growing
shrubs or young evergreens, will add very greatly to its
usefulness. The importance of having such a protection or
shelter is altogether underestimated by the amateur.
The Soil
The chances are that
you will not find a spot of ideal garden soil ready for use
anywhere upon your place. But all except the
very worst of soils can be brought up to a very high degree of
productiveness — especially such small areas as home vegetable
gardens require. Large tracts of soil that are almost
pure sand, and others so heavy and mucky that for centuries
they lay uncultivated, have frequently been brought, in the
course of only a few years, to where they yield annually
tremendous crops on a commercial basis. So do not be
discouraged about your soil. Proper treatment of it is much
more important, and a garden-patch of average run-down, — or
"never-brought-up" soil — will produce much more for the
energetic and careful gardener than the richest spot will grow
under average methods of cultivation.
The ideal garden soil is a "rich,
sandy loam." And the fact cannot be overemphasized
that such soils usually are made, not found. Let us analyze
that description a bit, for right here we come to the first of
the four all-important factors of gardening — food. The
others are cultivation, moisture and temperature. "Rich" in
the gardener's vocabulary means full of plant food; more than
that — and this is a point of vital importance — it
means full of plant food ready to be used at once, all
prepared and spread out on the garden table, or rather where
growing
things can at once make use of it; or what we term, in one
word, "available" plant food.
Practically no soils in
long-inhabited communities remain naturally rich enough to
produce big crops. They are made rich, or kept rich, in two
ways; first, by cultivation, which helps to change the raw
plant food stored in the soil into available forms; and
second, by fertilizing or adding plant food to the
soil from outside sources.
"Sandy" in
the sense here used, means a soil containing enough particles
of s and so that water will
pass through it without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days
after a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a
handful, under ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall
apart readily after being pressed in the hand. It is not
necessary that the soil is sandy in appearance, but it should
be friable.
"Loam: a rich,
friable soil," says Webster. That hardly covers it,
but it does describe it. It is soil in which the sand and clay
are in proper proportions, so that neither greatly
predominate, and usually dark in color, from cultivation and
enrichment. Such a soil, even to the untrained eye, just
naturally looks as if it would grow things. It is remarkable
how quickly the whole physical appearance of a piece of
well-cultivated ground will change.
One instance came
about last fall in one of my gardens, where a strip had
contained onions for two years, and a little piece jutting off
from the middle of this had been prepared for them for just
one season. The rest had not received any extra fertilizing or
cultivation. When the garden was plowed up
in the fall, all three sections were as distinctly noticeable
as though a fence separated them. And I know that next springs
crop of carrots, before it is plowed under, will show the
lines of demarcation just as plainly.
This, then, will give you an
idea of a good garden soil. Perhaps in yours there will be too
much sand, or too much clay. That'll be a disadvantage, but
one which energy and perseverance will soon overcome to a
great extent — by the methods you will be learning in Chapter 7: The Soil And Its
Preparation.
Drainage
There is, however, one other
thing you must look out for in selecting your garden site, and
that is drainage. Dig down eight or twelve inches after you
have picked out a favorable spot, and examine the sub-soil.
This is the second strata, usually of different texture and
color from the rich surface soil, and harder than it. If you
find a sandy or gravelly bed, no matter how yellow and poor it
looks, you have chosen the right spot. But if it is a stiff,
heavy clay, especially a blue clay, you will have to either
drain it or be content with a very late garden — that is,
unless you are at the top of a knoll or on a slope. Chapter
VII contains further suggestions in regard to this
problem.
Soil Antecedents
There was a further reason
for mentioning that strip of onion ground. It is a very
practical illustration of what last year's handling of the
soil means to this year's garden. If you can pick out a spot,
even if it is not the most desirable in other ways, that has
been well enriched or cultivated for a year or two previous,
take that for this year's garden. And in the meantime
have the spot on which you intend to make your
permanent vegetable garden
thoroughly "fitted," and grow there this year a crop of
potatoes or sweet corn, as suggested in Chapter 9: Sowing And Planting.
Then next year you will have conditions just right to give
your vegetables a great start.
Other Considerations
There are other things of
minor importance but worth considering, such as the shape of
your gar den plot, for instance. The more nearly
rectangular, the more convenient it will be to work and the
more easily kept clean and neat. Have it large
enough, or at least open on two
ends, so that a rototiller can be used in plowing and tilling.
And if by any means you can have it within reach of an
adequate supply of water, which will be a tremendous help in
seasons of protracted drought.
Then again, if you have
ground enough, lay off two plots so that you can take
advantage of the practice of rotation, alternating grass,
potatoes or corn with the vegetable garden. Of course it is
possible to practice crop rotation to some extent within the
limits of even the small vegetable garden, but it will
be much better, if possible, to rotate the entire
garden-patch.
All these things, then, one has
to keep in mind in picking the spot best suited for the home
vegetable garden. It should be, if possible, of convenient
access; it should have a warm exposure and be well-enriched,
well worked-up soil, not too light nor too heavy, and by all
means well drained; If it has been thoroughly cultivated for a
year or two previous, so much the better. If it is
near a supply of water, so situated that it can be at least
plowed and tilled with a rototiller, and large enough to allow
the garden to be shifted every other year or two, still more
the better.
Fill all of these
requirements that you can, and then by taking full advantage
of the advantages you have, you can discount the
disadvantages. After all it is careful, persistent work, more
than natural
advantages, that will tell the story; and a good garden does
not grow — it's made.
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