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Home Vegetable Gardening

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Any of the harrows mentioned above (except the Meeker) and likewise the
prong-hoe, will have to be followed by the iron rake when preparing the
ground for small-seeded garden vegetables. Get the sort with what is
termed the "bow" head (see illustration) instead of one in which the
head is fastened directly to the end of the handle. It is less likely
to get broken, and easier to use. There is quite a knack in
manipulating even a garden rake, which will come only with practice. Do
not rake as though you were gathering up leaves or grass. The secret in
using the garden rake is _not_ to gather things up. Small stones,
lumps of earth and such things, you of course wish to remove. Keep
these raked off ahead of where you are leveling the soil, which is
accomplished with a backward-and-forward movement of the rake.

The tool-house of every garden of any size should contain a seed-drill.
Labor which is otherwise tedious and difficult is by it rendered mere
play--as well as being better done. The operations of marking the row,
opening the furrow, dropping the seed at the proper depth and distance,
covering immediately with fresh earth, and firming the soil, are all
done at one fell swoop and as fast as you can walk. It will even drop
seeds in hills. But that is not all: it may be had as part of a
combination machine, which, after your seeds are planted--with each row
neatly rolled on top, and plainly visible--may be at once transformed
into a wheel hoe that will save you as much time in caring for your
plants as the seed-drill did in planting your seed. Hoeing drudgery
becomes a thing of the past. The illustration herewith shows such a
machine, and some of the varied attachments which may be had for it.
There are so many, and so varied in usefulness, that it would require
an entire chapter to detail their special advantages and methods of
use. The catalogues describing them will give you many valuable
suggestions; and other ways of utilizing them will discover themselves
to you in your work.

Valuable as the wheel hoe is, however, and varied in its scope of work,
the time-tried hoe cannot be entirely dispensed with. An accompanying
photograph [ED. Not shown here] shows four distinct types, all of which
will pay for themselves in a garden of moderate size. The one on the
right is the one most generally seen; next to it is a modified form
which personally I prefer for all light work, such as loosening soil
and cutting out weeds. It is lighter and smaller, quicker and easier to
handle. Next to this is the Warren, or heart-shaped hoe, especially
valuable in opening and covering drills for seed, such as beans, peas
or corn. The scuffle-hoe, or scarifier, which completes the four, is
used between narrow rows for shallow work, such as cutting off small
weeds and breaking up the crust. It has been rendered less frequently
needed by the advent of the wheel hoe, but when crops are too large to
admit of the use of the latter, the scuffle-hoe is still an
indispensable time-saver.

There remains one task connected with gardening that is a bug-bear.
That is hand-weeding. To get down on one's hands and knees, in the
blistering hot dusty soil, with the perspiration trickling down into
one's eyes, and pick small weedlets from among tender plantlets, is not
a pleasant occupation. There are, however, several sorts of small
weeders which lessen the work considerably. One or another of the
common types will seem preferable, according to different conditions of
soil and methods of work. Personally, I prefer the Lang's for most
uses. The angle blade makes it possible to cut very near to small
plants and between close-growing plants, while the strap over the back
of a finger or thumb leaves the fingers free for weeding without
dropping the instrument.

There are two things to be kept in mind about hand-weeding which will
reduce this work to the minimum. First, never let the weeds get a
start; for even if they do not increase in number, if they once smother
the ground or crop, you will wish you had never heard of a garden.
Second, do your hand-weeding while the surface soil is soft, when the
weeds come out easily. A hard-crusted soil will double and treble the
amount of labor required.

It would seem that it should be needless, when garden tools are such
savers of labor, to suggest that they should be carefully kept, always
bright and clean and sharp, and in repair. But such advice is needed,
to judge by most of the tools one sees.

Always have a piece of cloth or old bag on hand where the garden tools
are kept, and never put them away soiled and wet. Keep the cutting
edges sharp. There is as much pleasure in trying to run a dull
lawnmower as in working with a rusty, battered hoe. Have an extra
handle in stock in case of accident; they are not expensive. In
selecting hand tools, always pick out those with handles in which the
grain does not run out at the point where there will be much strain in
using the tool. In rakes, hoes, etc., get the types with ferrule and
shank one continuous piece, so as not to be annoyed with loose heads.

Spend a few cents to send for some implement catalogues. They will well
repay careful perusal, even if you do not order this year. In these
days of intensive advertising, the commercial catalogue often contains
matter of great worth, in the gathering and presentation of which no
expense has been spared.


FOR FIGHTING PLANT ENEMIES

The devices and implements used for fighting plant enemies are of two
sorts:--(1) those used to afford mechanical protection to the plants;
(2) those used to apply insecticides and fungicides. Of the first the
most useful is the covered frame. It consists usually of a wooden box,
some eighteen inches to two feet square and about eight high, covered
with glass, protecting cloth, mosquito netting or mosquito wire. The
first two coverings have, of course, the additional advantage of
retaining heat and protecting from cold, making it possible by their
use to plant earlier than is otherwise safe. They are used extensively
in getting an extra early and safe start with cucumbers, melons and the
other vine vegetables.

Simpler devices for protecting newly-set plants, such as tomatoes or
cabbage, from the cut-worm, are stiff, tin, cardboard or tar paper
collars, which are made several inches high and large enough to be put
around the stem and penetrate an inch or so into the soil.

For applying poison powders, such as dry Paris green, hellebore and
tobacco dust, the home gardener should supply himself with a powder
gun. If one must be restricted to a single implement, however, it will
be best to get one of the hand-power, compressed-air sprayers--either a
knapsack pump or a compressed-air sprayer--types of which are
illustrated. These are used for applying wet sprays, and should be
supplied with one of the several forms of mist-making nozzles, the non-
cloggable automatic type being the best. For more extensive work a
barrel pump, mounted on wheels, will be desirable, but one of the above
will do a great deal of work in little time. Extension rods for use in
spraying trees and vines may be obtained for either. For operations on
a very small scale a good hand-syringe may be used, but as a general
thing it will be best to invest a few dollars more and get a small tank
sprayer, as this throws a continuous stream or spray and holds a much
larger amount of the spraying solution. Whatever type is procured, get
a brass machine--it will out-wear three or four of those made of
cheaper metal, which succumbs very quickly to the, corroding action of
the strong poisons and chemicals used in them.

Of implements for harvesting, beside the spade, prong-hoe and spading-
fork already mentioned, very few are used in the small garden, as most
of them need not only long rows to be economically used, but horse-
power also. The onion harvester attachment for the double wheel hoe,
costing $1.00, may be used with advantage in loosening onions, beets,
turnips, etc., from the soil or for cutting spinach. Running the hand-
plow close on either side of carrots, parsnips and other deep-growing
vegetables will aid materially in getting them out. For fruit picking,
with tall trees, the wire-fingered fruit-picker, secured to the end of
a long handle, will be of great assistance, but with the modern method
of using low-headed trees it will not be needed.

Another class of garden implements are those used in pruning--but where
this is attended to properly from the start, a good sharp jack-knife
and a pair of pruning shears (the English makes are the best, as they
are in some things, when we are frank enough to confess the truth) will
easily handle all the work of the kind necessary.

Still another sort of garden device is that used for supporting the
plants; such as stakes, trellises, wires, etc. Altogether too little
attention usually is given these, as with proper care in storing over
winter they will not only last for years, but add greatly to the
convenience of cultivation and to the neat appearance of the garden.
Various contrivances are illustrated in the seed catalogues, and many
may be home-made--such as a stake-trellis for supporting beans.

As a final word to the intending purchaser of garden tools, I would
say: first thoroughly investigate the different sorts available, and
when buying, do not forget that a good tool or a well-made machine will
be giving you satisfactory use long, long after the price is forgotten,
while a poor one is a constant source of discomfort. Get good tools,
and _take_ good care of them. And let me repeat that a few dollars
a year, judiciously spent, for tools afterward well cared for, will
soon give you a very complete set, and add to your garden profit and
pleasure.




CHAPTER VI.

MANURES AND FERTILIZERS


To a very small extent garden vegetables get their food from the air.
The amount obtained in this way however, is so infinitesimal that from
the practical standpoint it need not be considered at all. Practically
speaking, your vegetables must get all their food from the garden soil.

This important garden fact may seem self-evident, but, if one may judge
by their practice, amateur gardeners very frequently fail to realize
it. The professional gardener must come to realize it for the simple
reason that if he does not he will go out of business. Without an
abundant supply of suitable food it is just as impossible to grow good
vegetables as it would be to train a winning football team on a diet of
sweet cider and angel cake. Without plenty of plant food, all the care,
coddling, coaxing, cultivating, spraying and worrying you may give will
avail little. The soil must be rich or the garden will be poor.

Plant food is of as many kinds, or, more accurately speaking, in as
many _forms_, as is food for human beings. But the first
distinction to make in plant foods is that between available and non-
available foods--that is, between foods which it is possible for the
plant to use, and those which must undergo a change of some sort before
the plant can take them up, assimilate them, and turn them into a
healthy growth of foliage, fruit or root. It is just as readily
possible for a plant to starve in a soil abounding in plant food, if
that food is not available, as it would be for you to go unnourished in
the midst of soups and tender meats if the latter were frozen solid.

Plants take all their nourishment in the form of soups, and very weak
ones at that. Plant food to be available must be soluble to the action
of the feeding root tubes; and unless it is available it might, as far
as the present benefiting of your garden is concerned, just as well not
be there at all. Plants take up their food through innumerable and
microscopic feeding rootlets, which possess the power of absorbing
moisture, and furnishing it, distributed by the plant juices, or sap,
to stem, branch, leaf, flower and fruit. There is one startling fact
which may help to fix these things in your memory: it takes from 300 to
500 pounds of water to furnish food for the building of one pound of
dry plant matter. You can see why plant food is not of much use unless
it is available; and it is not available unless it is soluble.


THE THEORY OF MANURING

The food of plants consists of chemical elements, or rather, of
numerous substances which contain these elements in greater or less
degrees. There is not room here to go into the interesting science of
this matter. It is evident, however, as we have already seen that the
plants must get their food from the soil, that there are but two
sources for such food: it must either be in the soil already, or we
must put it there. The practice of adding plant food to the soil is
what is called manuring.

The only three of the chemical elements mentioned which we need
consider are: nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. The average soil
contains large amounts of all three, but they are for the most part in
forms which are not available and, therefore, to that extent, may be at
once dismissed from our consideration. (The non-available plant foods
already in the soil may be released or made available to some extent by
cultivation. See Chapter VII.) In practically every soil that has been
cultivated and cropped, in long-settled districts, the amounts of
nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash which are immediately available
will be too meager to produce a good crop of vegetables. It becomes
absolutely necessary then, if one would have a really successful
garden, no matter how small it is, to add plant foods to the soil
abundantly. When you realize, (1) that the number of plant foods
containing the three essential elements is almost unlimited, (2) that
each contains them in different proportions and in differing degrees of
availability, (3) that the amount of the available elements already in
the soil varies greatly and is practically undeterminable, and (4) that
different plants, and even different varieties of the same plant, use
these elements in widely differing proportions; then you begin to
understand what a complex matter this question of manuring is and why
it is so much discussed and so little understood. What a labyrinth it
offers for any writer--to say nothing of the reader--to go astray in!

I have tried to present this matter clearly. If I have succeeded it may
have been only to make the reader hopelessly discouraged of ever
getting at anything definite in the question of enriching the soil. In
that case my advice would be that, for the time being, he forget all
about it. Fortunately, in the question of manuring, a little knowledge
is not often a dangerous thing. Fortunately, too, your plants do not
insist that you solve the food problem for them. Set a full table and
they will help themselves and take the right dishes. The only thing to
worry about is that of the three important foods mentioned (nitrogen,
phosphoric acid and potash) there will not be enough: for it has been
proved that when any one of these is exhausted the plant practically
stops growth; it will not continue to "fill up" on the other two. Of
course there is such a thing as going to extremes and wasting plant
foods, even if it does not, as a rule, hurt the plants. If, however,
the fertilizers and manures described in the following sections are
applied as directed, and as mentioned in Chapter VII., good results
will be certain, provided the seed, cultivation and season are right.


VARIOUS MANURES

The terms "manure" and "fertilizer" are used
somewhat ambiguously and interchangeably. Using the former term in a
broad sense--as meaning any substance containing available plant food
applied to the soil, we may say that manure is of two kinds: organic,
such as stable manure, or decayed vegetable matter; and inorganic, such
as potash salts, phosphatic rock and commercial mixed fertilizers. In a
general way the term "fertilizer" applies to these inorganic manures,
and I shall use it in this sense through the following text.

Between the organic manures, or "natural" manures as they are often
called, and fertilizers there is a very important difference which
should never be lost sight of. In theory, and as a chemical fact too, a
bag of fertilizer may contain twice the available plant food of a ton
of well rotted manure; but out of a hundred practical gardeners ninety-
nine--and probably one more--would prefer the manure. There is a reason
why--two reasons, even if not one of the hundred gardeners could give
them to you. First, natural manures have a decided physical effect upon
most soils (altogether aside from the plant food they contain); and
second, plants seem to have a preference as to the _form_ in which
their food elements are served to them. Fertilizers, on the other hand,
are valuable only for the plant food they contain, and sometimes have a
bad effect upon the physical condition of the soil.

When it comes right down to the practical question of what to put on
your garden patch to grow big crops, nothing has yet been discovered
that is better than the old reliable stand-by--well rotted, thoroughly
fined stable or barnyard manure. Heed those adjectives! We have already
seen that plant food which is not available might as well be, for our
immediate purposes, at the North Pole. The plant food in "green" or
fresh manure is not available, and does not become so until it is
released by the decay of the organic matters therein. Now the time
possible for growing a crop of garden vegetables is limited; in many
instances it is only sixty to ninety days. The plants want their food
ready at once; there is no time to be lost waiting for manure to rot in
the soil. That is a slow process--especially so in clayey or heavy
soils. So on your garden use only manure that is well rotted and broken
up. On the other hand, see that it has not "fire-fanged" or burned out,
as horse manure, if piled by itself and left, is very sure to do. If
you keep any animals of your own, see that the various sorts of manure
--excepting poultry manure, which is so rich that it is a good plan to
keep it for special purposes--are mixed together and kept in a compact,
built-up square heap, not a loose pyramidal pile. Keep it under cover
and where it cannot wash out. If you have a pig or so, your manure will
be greatly improved by the rooting, treading and mixing they will give
it. If not, the pile should be turned from bottom to top and outside in
and rebuilt, treading down firmly in the process, every month or two--
applying water, but not soaking, if it has dried out in the meantime.
Such manure will be worth two or three times as much, for garden
purposes, as that left to burn or remain in frozen lumps. If you have
to buy all your manure, get that which has been properly kept; and if
you are not familiar with the condition in which it should be, get a
disinterested gardener or farmer to select it for you. When possible,
it will pay you to procure manure several months before you want to use
it and work it over as suggested above. In buying manure keep in mind
not what animals made it, but what food was fed--that is the important
thing. For instance, the manure from highly-fed livery horses may be,
weight for weight, worth three to five times that from cattle wintered
over on poor hay, straw and a few roots.

There are other organic manures which it is sometimes possible for one
to procure, such as refuse brewery hops, fish scraps and sewage, but
they are as a rule out of the reach of, or objectionable for, the
purposes of the home gardener.

There are, however, numerous things constantly going to waste about the
small place, which should be converted into manure. Fallen leaves,
grass clippings, vegetable tops and roots, green weeds, garbage, house
slops, dish water, chip dirt from the wood-pile, shavings--any thing
that will rot away, should go into the compost heap. These should be
saved, under cover if possible, in a compact heap and kept moist (never
soaked) to help decomposition. To start the heap, gather up every
available substance and make it into a pile with a few wheelbarrows
full, or half a cartload, of fresh horse manure, treading the whole
down firmly. Fermentation and decomposition will be quickly started.
The heap should occasionally be forked over and restacked. Light
dressings of lime, mixed in at such times, will aid thorough
decomposition.

Wood ashes form another valuable manure which should be carefully
saved. Beside the plant food contained, they have a most excellent
effect upon the mechanical condition of almost every soil. Ashes should
not be put in the compost heap, because there are special uses for
them, such as dusting on squash or melon vines, or using on the onion
bed, which makes it desirable to keep them separate. Wood ashes may
frequently be bought for fifty cents a barrel, and at this price a few
barrels for the home garden will be a good investment.

Coal ashes contain practically no available plant food, but are well
worth saving to use on stiff soils, for paths, etc.


VALUE OF GREEN MANURING

Another source of organic manures, altogether too little appreciated,
is what is termed "green manuring"--the plowing under of growing crops
to enrich the land. Even in the home garden this system should be taken
advantage of whenever possible. In farm practice, clover is the most
valuable crop to use for this purpose, but on account of the length of
time necessary to grow it, it is useful for the vegetable garden only
when there is sufficient room to have clover growing on, say, one half-
acre plot, while the garden occupies, for two years, another half-acre;
and then changing the two about. This system will give an ideal garden
soil, especially where it is necessary to rely for the most part upon
chemical fertilizers.

There are, however, four crops valuable for green-manuring the garden,
even where the same spot must be occupied year after year: rye, field
corn, field peas (or cow peas in the south) and crimson clover. After
the first of September, sow every foot of garden ground cleared of its
last crop, with winter rye. Sow all ground cleared during August with
crimson clover and buckwheat, and mulch the clover with rough manure
after the buckwheat dies down. Sow field peas or corn on any spots that
would otherwise remain unoccupied six weeks or more. All these are sown
broadcast, on a freshly raked surface. Such a system will save a very
large amount of plant food which otherwise would be lost, will convert
unavailable plant food into available forms while you wait for the next
crop, and add _humus_ to the soil--concerning the importance of
which see Chapter VII.


CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS

I am half tempted to omit entirely any discussion of chemical
fertilizers: to give a list of them, tell how to apply them, and let
the why and wherefore go. It is, however, such an important subject,
and the home gardener will so frequently have to rely almost entirely
upon their use, that probably it will be best to explain the subject as
thoroughly as I can do it in very limited space. I shall try to give
the theory of scientific chemical manuring in one paragraph.

We have already seen that the soil contains within itself some
available plant food. We can determine by chemical analysis the exact
amounts of the various plant foods--nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash,
etc.--which a crop of any vegetable will remove from the soil. The idea
in scientific chemical manuring is to add to the available plant foods
already in the soil just enough more to make the resulting amounts
equal to the quantities of the various elements used by the crop grown.
In other words:

)
Available plant food elements in (
the soil, plus > == Amounts of food elements
Available chemical food elements ( in matured crop
supplied in fertilizers )

That was the theory--a very pretty and profound one! The discoverers of
it imagined that all agriculture would be revolutionized; all farm and
garden practice reduced to an exact science; all older theories of
husbandry and tillage thrown by the heels together upon the scrap heap
of outworn things. Science was to solve at one fell swoop all the age-
old problems of agriculture. And the whole thing was all right in every
way but one--it didn't work. The unwelcome and obdurate fact remained
that a certain number of pounds of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and
potash--about thirty-three--in a ton of good manure would grow bigger
crops than would the same number of pounds of the same elements in a
bag of chemical fertilizer.

Nevertheless this theory, while it failed as the basis of an exact
agricultural science, has been developed into an invaluable guide for
using all manures, and especially concentrated chemical manures. And
the above facts, if I have presented them clearly, will assist the home
gardener in solving the fertilizer problems which he is sure to
encounter.


VARIOUS FERTILIZERS

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