Before taking up the garden
vegetables individually, I shall outline the general practice of cultivation,
which applies to all.
The purposes of cultivation are
three to get rid of weeds, and to stimulate growth by (1) letting air into the
soil and freeing unavailable plant food, and (2) by conserving moisture.
As to weeds, the gardener of any
experience need not be told the importance of keeping his crops clean. He has
learned from bitter and costly experience the price of
letting them get
anything resembling a start. He knows that one or two days' growth, after they
are well up, followed perhaps by a day or so of rain, may easily double or
treble the work of cleaning a patch of onions or carrots, and that where weeds
have attained any size they cannot be taken out of sowed crops without doing a
great deal of injury. He also realizes, or should, that every day's growth
means just so much available plant food stolen from under the very roots of his
legitimate crops.
Instead of letting the weeds get
away with any plant food, he should be furnishing more, for clean and frequent
cultivation will not only break the soil up mechanically, but let in air,
moisture and heat all essential in effecting those chemical changes necessary
to convert non- available into available plant food. Long before the science in
the case was discovered, the soil cultivators had learned by observation the
necessity of keeping the soil nicely loosened about their growing crops. Even
the lanky and untutored aborigine saw to it that his squaw not only put a bad
fish under the hill of maize but plied her shell hoe over it. Plants need to
breathe. Their roots need air. You might as well expect to find the rosy glow
of happiness on the wan cheeks of a cotton-mill child slave as to expect to see
the luxuriant dark green of healthy plant life in a suffocated garden.
Important as the question of air
is, that of water ranks beside it. You may not see at first
what the matter of frequent cultivation has to do with water. But let us stop a
moment and look into it. Take a strip of blotting paper, dip one end in water,
and watch the moisture run up hill, soak up through the blotter. The scientists
have labeled that "capillary attraction" the water crawls up little
invisible tubes formed by the texture of the blotter. Now take a similar piece,
cut it across, hold the two cut edges firmly together, and try it again. The
moisture refuses to cross the line: the connection has been severed.
In the same way the water stored
in the soil after a rain begins at once to escape again into the atmosphere.
That on the surface evaporates first, and that which has soaked in begins to
soak in through the soil to the surface. It is leaving your garden, through the
millions of soil tubes, just as surely as if you had a two-inch pipe and a
gasoline engine, pumping it into the gutter night and day! Save your garden by
stopping the waste. It is the easiest thing in the world to do cut the pipe in
two. By frequent cultivation of the surface soil not more than one or two
inches deep for most small vegetables the soil tubes are kept broken, and a
mulch of dust is maintained. Try to get over every part of your garden,
especially where it is not shaded, once in every ten days or two weeks. Does
that seem like too much work? You can push your wheel hoe through, and thus
keep the dust mulch as a constant protection, as fast as you can walk. If you
wait for the weeds, you will nearly have to crawl through, doing more or less
harm by disturbing your growing plants, losing all the plant food (and they
will take the cream) which they have consumed, and actually putting in more
hours of infinitely more disagreeable work. If the beginner at gardening has
not been convinced by the facts given, there is only one thing left to convince
him experience.
Having given so much space to
the reason for constant care in this matter, the
question of methods naturally follows. Get a wheel hoe. The simplest sorts will
not only save you an infinite amount of time and work, but do the work better,
very much better than it can be done by hand. You can
grow good vegetables, especially if your garden is a very small one,
without one of these labor-savers, but I can assure you that you will never
regret the small investment necessary to procure it.
With a wheel hoe, the work of
preserving the soil mulch becomes very simple. If one has not a wheel hoe, for
small areas very rapid work can be done with the scuffle hoe.
The matter of keeping weeds
cleaned out of the rows and between the plants in the rows is not so quickly
accomplished. Where hand-work is necessary, let it be done at once. Here are a
few practical suggestions that will reduce this work to a minimum, (1) Get at
this work while the ground is soft; as soon as the soil begins to dry out after
a rain is the best time. Under such conditions the weeds will pull out by the
roots, without breaking off. (2) Immediately before weeding, go over the rows
with a wheel hoe, cutting shallow, but just as close as possible, leaving a
narrow, plainly visible strip which must be hand- weeded. The best tool for
this purpose is the double wheel hoe with disc attachment, or hoes for large
plants. (3) See to it that not only the weeds are pulled but that every inch
of soil surface is broken up. It is fully as important that the weeds
just sprouting be destroyed, as that the larger ones be pulled up. One stroke
of the weeder or the fingers will destroy a hundred weed seedlings in less time
than one weed can be pulled out after it gets a good start. (4) Use one of the
small hand-weeders until you become skilled with it. Not only may more work be
done but the fingers will be saved unnecessary wear.
The skilful use of the wheel hoe
can be acquired through practice only. The first thing to learn is that it is
necessary to watch the wheels only: the blades, disc or rakes will take care of
themselves.
The operation of
"hilling" consists in drawing up the soil about the stems of growing
plants, usually at the time of second or third hoeing. It used to be the
practice to hill everything that could be hilled "up to the
eyebrows," but it has gradually been discarded for what is termed
"level culture"; and you will readily see the reason, from what has
been said about the escape of moisture from the surface of the soil; for of
course the two upper sides of the hill, which may be represented by an
equilateral triangle with one side horizontal, give more exposed surface than
the level surface represented by the base. In wet soils or seasons hilling may
be advisable, but very seldom otherwise. It has the additional disadvantage of
making it difficult to maintain the soil mulch which is so desirable.
Rotation of crops.
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There is another thing to be
considered in making each vegetable do its best, and that is crop rotation, or
the following of any vegetable with a different sort at the next planting.
With some vegetables, such as
cabbage, this is almost imperative, and practically all are helped by it. Even
onions, which are popularly supposed to be the proving exception to the rule,
are healthier, and do as well after some other crop, provided
the soil is as finely pulverized and rich as a previous crop of onions
would leave it.
Here are the fundamental rules of
crop rotation:
(1) Crops of the same vegetable,
or vegetables of the same family (such as turnips and cabbage) should not
follow each other.
(2) Vegetables that feed near the
surface, like corn, should follow deep-rooting crops.
(3) Vines or leaf crops should
follow root crops.
(4) Quick-growing crops should
follow those occupying the land all season.
These are the principles which
should determine the rotations to be followed in individual cases. The proper
way to attend to this matter is when making the planting plan. You will then
have time to do it properly, and will need to give it no further thought for a
year.
With the above suggestions in
mind, and put to use , it will not be
difficult to give the crops those special attentions which are needed to make
them do their very best.
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