The Kitchen-Garden

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 21, 1907

The Kitchen-Garden

The kitchen-garden has been somewhere designated as an adjunct of the kitchen itself, and belonging to the domain of the housewife. It should not necessarily follow that she is to do all the labor in the garden, but merely do the planning, and exercise an intelligent management over it. The head of the house is quite apt to depreciate the value of a garden and to insist that it does not pay, because it seems such pottering work in the busy season of the year; but well-cared-for gardens do pay in pleasure, and, if the effort is made, will pay handsomely in money.

Being related to the kitchen, the garden should be located near that part of the house. It should be fenced about to keep out the chickens. The soil should be fed with an abundance of fertilizer

(because gardening is intensive culture) and worked fine. “Fine the soil” was the emphatic and oft-repeated injunction of one of the most successful truck raisers and seedsmen.

An intelligent rotation should be observed in the garden as well as in the field. Root crops should not always be grown on the same place, nor leaf crops, like lettuce or cabbage.

It is an economy to plant the seeds in long rows, rather than in beds, as this method permits the use of a horse cultivator or a wheel hoe, and eliminates the back-breaking hand-work in weeding and stirring of the soil. The rows should run in a northerly-southerly direction, to best secure the benefits of the sun’s rays. Grape-vines, berry and currant bushes, asparagus bed, rhubarb, and such plants which are biennial or perennial, are better placed around the borders, or together at one side of the garden.

A half-acre garden is sufficient to grow all the vegetables and small fruits for an ordinary family and make a profit through sales. An acre on Long Island has been known to yield one thousand dollars in garden-truck, which, of course, requires extra diligence on the part of the proprietor and a proximity to the city market, but aside from the financial profit, the healthful pleasure of tilling the ground is a satisfaction.—The Circle.