My handkerchief garden. Size, 25 x 60 feet

Chapter I. Uouj It Bggao

LONG the edge of the Sound, from Stamford to New York, we had looked everywhere in the hope that we might find a small house, a little garden, and a low rent. These things seldom grow together. Houses with no land-, land enough with big houses, and both land and houses in plenty at high rents. At last it was found ; a six-room house with a mere handkerchief of a garden, measuring about one-thirtieth of an acre, or about as big as a city back yard. The soil was a wet, heavy clay, full of stones, and shaded by a number of tall trees growing on the next lot. In March, 1887, we moved to the place, and on the twenty-first we paid twenty-five cents for one paper of Boston Market Lettuce seed. So it was the scrap of a garden began, and thereon does hang the more or less learned remarks that make this book.- There are people so constituted that they cannot see anything remarkable in a paper of seeds. A seed is potential wealth — bran new wealth that does not exist, but waits the partnership of nature and the gardener. Seeds are about the cheapest thing in the world. At wholesale a cent will buy a hundred seeds of lettuce. An acre of ground, if managed by a man who knows his trade, will produce in one season 40,000 heads of lettuce. New York will calmly eat every head at three cents each and cry for more. You would probably pay at the store five cents a head or $2,000 for the lot.

Oh! Figures can be made to say anything.

Think so?

All the same, you and I and the rest of the folks do pay $2,000 to somebody for that yield of le.ttuce many times over every spring.

It's quite true the actual grower may not get it all. He seldom does and thereon might be written a tale of woe that would move the world to tears had it not, poor world, been listening to the gruesome story for about seven thousand years. There are problems in social economies so old that they have lost the power of speech. This is one of them, and it was in our handkerchief garden we dug up a great truth that may help to solve this very problem. It was a dusty old truth and smelled of the earth, yet, by decking it out in a few sprigs of pungent parsley, and framing it with the enticing lettuce, the persuasive pea, and the inspiring cauliflower, I hope to set it forth as a dish worthy the intelligent reader's grateful digestion.

A garden is a queer place. You can dig up facts and greens with the same hoe — provided you know a

//OiV IT BEGAN-. 3

fact when you see it. Therefore, it happens that in presenting this dish of greens I may add sundry facts for dressing, the same facts being duly dug up in the same handkerchief garden. Persons of a romantic and expansive frame of mind have written about gardens without regard to the facts growing therein. One particularly aggravating person even wrote a tearful account of one sad summer in a garden, and the world has been delighted to read it many times over. My handkerchief garden is on a plane of more solemn import, and its great moral lessons are not addressed to persons of a light and sportive nature. They appeal rather to those finer instincts of the heart that cluster round the dinner table and the green-grocer's bill.

A pinch of seed in a paper bag is about as useless a thing as you can find. The seed must be joined to three great facts in nature — heat, moisture and light, if new wealth is to reward our labors. Lettuce seed will sprout in a temperature ranging from 60° to 70° by day, and not less than 40° by night.* Our room had a west window and was warmed by a small stove. Here were the elements of horticultural success. There was no gas in the room. This is most important — for in my experience it is difficult, almost impossible, to raise plants of any kind where gas is burned. A single gas-jet will spoil the air as fast as six men. Plants must have pure air, and as they can not go out for a walk every time they have a headache, they give up in despair in a rooni where a gaslamp has ruined the air for breathing purposes. The moral of all this is just here; if plants will not thrive in bad air, how can we ? We do not. There is, it is true, no authenticated record of a death by reason of a gas-light, yet it is also true that we are hurt in greater

* All temperature records here are by Fahrenheit's seale.

or less degree by every lamp that burns in our houses. The real moral is — ventilate your rooms.

To secure the union of the three facts, heat, light, and moisture, and bring them to our lettuce seed, we procured a six-inch flower-pot, worth, perhaps, ten cents at retail. By dint of digging in the garden I managed to get a few lumps of half frozen soil, and put them to dry on the floor by the fire. In a few hours the soil was soft enough to break up into dry mould in the hand, and I filled the pot nearly full, scattered the lettuce seed on top, sifted more soil over it through the fingers, and gently pressed it down firm. A sprinkle of water shaken over the soil by hand, wet the seed, and then the pot was placed in a warm corner behind the stove, and covered with an old newspaper. Two factors were thus provided, heat and moisture. The third could be added afterwards, as soon as the seeds began to stir with young life. For three days the flower-pot garden was examined night and morning, and, if the soil was dry, a little more water was added. On the fourth day the surface was broken by tender young things just poking their green fingers up to reach the light and air. The pot was at once placed in the window, and there it stayed about six weeks, and was then completely filled with young lettuce plants about three inches high, and hanging over the sides of the pot in a luxuriant, pale-green mass. So it was my handkerchief garden began in my study window.

T

WHAT IV AS DONE WITH IT. 5

Chapter II

a HEN the snows of March melted away, the garden came into sight. The former tenant had apparently regarded the garden as the proper place to deposit the waste of a generation. Bones, clamshells, rejected shoes and cans, were plentiful. Added to this, it had not been dug over since the last crop, and corn-stubble covered half the space. The carpenters at work on the house had tramped the soil down hard, and in a corner under the trees were, the remains of countless weeds nipped by last year's frost.

A very slight examination showed that the soil had one great merit. It was strong. A mass of rocks, weathered by the storms of a hundred years, and grey with moss, had sent down their fertilizing dust, and the tall trees had every year carpeted the place with their leaves. There had also been hens and pigs on the place, and these, too, had done what they •could to contribute to the future crops. Rumor also had it that in the previous year it had been heavily manured, and had borne a large crop of corn and beans. Here was the problem. The place measured about eighty feet on one street, and seventy-five on another. The house stood just south of the center, near the street. A rocky cliff behind the house, while very picturesque, was, of course, valueless for any purpose, being too steep for a foothold, and too bare to produce anything save mosses and lichens. What could we do with it. . The most simple way to treat the place would be to. sow grass seed over all the ground, and keep it in grass. Merely to let it run up to grass would be cheap but ugly. If in grass at all, it must be kept as a lawn. A lawn would certainly look well, save all care and expense, except the weekly clipping to keep the grass in order. That means a lawn-mower, costing ten dollars. It means labor in pushing it over the grass, not less than fifteen times every summer. It is doubtful if this could be done for less than fifteen dollars. Some of my neighbors tell me it costs $1.50 a week for five months each year to keep a small lawn in order. The cost on this place, including the mower, would not be less than twenty-five dollars the first year. The cost of preparing the ground and sowing the seed would not be less than four dollars more, and each spring, fertilizer to the value of two dollars would be required. It began to look as if the cheapest thing that could be done would be pretty expensive. Of course, the place could be left to take care of its.elf, but this would be morally wrong. There were gardens on every side kept free from weeds at a greater or less expenditure of time, labor and money. To suffer weeds to bloom and scatter their seeds over these gardens, and thus to injure the neighbors' property, would be inexcusable. No man has a right to propagate weeds near any cultivated land. It is simply unjust to permit weeds of any kind to grow on your land while others are trying to keep them out of their land. A lawn is, therefore, a moral measure, as it checks the growth of weeds, and by its beauty enhances the value of the estate, and of all those near it.

That settled the matter. Something must be done with the ground. It must be either laid down to grass, or cultivated as a garden. The chief cost of a

WHAT WAS DONE WITH IT. 7

lawn is the labor. There was my own labor. Could I not push the lawn-mower myself? Many of the gentlemen near by did so. Why could I not do likewise ? No reason whatever why I might not in this way save part of the expense of a lawn.

Now a lawn-mower is very well in its way. It's not very hard work to use it, and it keeps a man out in the air and sunshine. The chief objection is that it is not work enough. It pays to work out of doors. For every man who works a part of the day in the house there should be several hours devoted to exercise in the open air. A garden is a sanitary measure. It takes you out on the sweet, healthful ground. A garden is a good place to bury headaches. That settled the matter, and I decided to use all the available land .for a flower and kitchen garden. There were two other reasons, beside the sanitary advantage, for having a garden. In suburban towns and villages the rent is for the house, and the lot of land on which it stands is practically thrown in free. It costs no more to have the house without the land than with it, for as soon as the land becomes too valuable, the houses cover all the land as in a city. If the land is used for a garden it will make a solid financial return, while a lawn pays nothing beyond the doubtful value of looking pretty from the road and the Christian grace of doing as you would be done by in the matter of weeds. All this had been settled when the lettuce seed was bought, and on the seventh of May, 1887, I put spade in the new venture.

It wasn't really a spade, for a digging fork is better. On that seventh of May I bought a digging fork, hoe and steel rake at a total expenditure of $1.38, and the handkerchief garden began. I had previously bought for %\ 60 ten plants of the "Jessie" strawberry, and they had been kept in a friend's garden while absent from home during a part of April. By May seventh all were dead save five, and the first work done was to fork up a little spot in the garden and set out those five plants. On the same afternoon the pot of young lettuce plants was brought out to the ground and a place, four feet square, was forked up and made smooth. On this little bed was set out, about five inches apart, a few dozen lettuce plants. There were some left which were given away to a neighbor — the first crop for the season.

The soil proved to be very tough and stiff, and one Italian man spent one day in trying to spade it over and nearly perished in the attempt. After that I did all the work myself, forking up the ground in little beds as it was wanted. This labor, with the tools and more seeds, brought the expense of the garden on the first of June up to $5.88. On the thirteenth of June the first lettuce and radishes were placed on my table, and the garden was credited with the first return, five cents for a fine head of lettuce and five cents for a bunch of breakfast radish.

The price of a fair average head of lettuce in the village store on that day was five cents. I had had been paying that sum every day for two or three weeks, and often paid more. The day I picked that •head of lettuce I saved five cents on the bill at the store. It was perfectly fair and right to credit the garden with the retail price of lettuce for that day.

My labor? Oh! yes! It cost labor to raise it, cost the seed and the flower pot, and^ all the little procession of odd minutes spent in caring for the crop. These were worth money, if my time was worth anything at all. My time is worth something for about five hours out of the twenty-four. The time spent in caring for the lettuce plants was simply unavailable or " off time " of no value, except as a time for exercise.

WHAT WAS DONE WITH IT 9

Exercise then must be, and was it not better to raise lettuce for my table than to trundle an unprofitable lawn-mower, or walk the streets in idleness. Beside this, every hour spent in the garden was a sanitary gain and therefore a commercial gain that could not be expressed in money. I am certain that I buried fourteen distinct headaches in that garden in one summer at a decided gain in medical attendance. It is certainly fair, then, to put the labor in the garden as free, because it would have been spent on something in any event. Besides this, the crop from the garden was a real money return for my labor. Within the next thirty days we used on our table or gave away thirty-five heads of lettuce at an avarage price of five cents, or $1.75. Some of the plants were transplanted twice and the space occupied by the mature crop was about twelve by three feet.

I knew from former experience in the business that a garden could be made to pay. How much I resolved to find out, as soon as may be, and for this purpose opened an account with my little plot, which account was duly made up and balanced at the end of the year. Herein is set forth the pros and cons of the whole business.

I paid out for labor, seeds, tools, etc., just $6.61. There was sent to my table, between June thirteenth and November first, vegetables of all kinds to the value of $25.82. Besides these vegetables there were produced sixty-four strawberry plants ( Jessie ) worth at the time, as the Jessie is a new variety, at least two cents each, or $1.28. This made a total return from the ground of $27.10. Deducting the cash paid out there was just $20.49 l^^t as the final result of my summer's work.

Pitiful little tale, not worth recording.

Think so ? • . .

It is small — only a trifling matter of $20.49. At the same time, $20.49 is $20.49 ^^^ most of us would accept it with a cheerful heart. No one was the worse for my partnership with nature. It was bran new money and came out of no man's pocket. Our table was supplied with vegetables for over four months, so that no purchases (except one quart of onions) were made at the stores for this time. Besides this, notwithstanding a rather poor season, the vegetables were of a far better quality than could be purchased anywhere. As an illustration of this I may confess without a blush that I ate nine cucumbers a day for several weeks in entire safety and complete satisfaction. To buy so many for one person would demand considerable moral courage, not alone for the price, but from the doubtful character of cucumbers two days old. Mine often reached the breakfast table in less time that it took to make the coffee — hence their beautiful innocence.

Did it pay ? Would it not have been better to lay the lawn to grass, and to trundle a lawn-mower or toss the light tennis ball ? Can't say. I am not a Tennis Courtier. But I do know that out of the ground comes health and wealth. Will you bring the children up forever on canned goods, when they might pull peas and good times out of the same ground. A home garden, even if it be only a patch like an extra large handkerchief, may in many a man's life-account make all the difference between profit and loss, between a dish of greens and a lot in the cemetery.

From a recent report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Connecticut it appears that forty-six families, representing twenty-nine trades and living in different parts of the State, were, at the time of the report, financially unhappy. The total income of the forty-six families amounted in one month to $2,475.36.

WHAT WAS DONE WITH IT. 11

Their expenses for the same time reached $2,760.39— an average loss for each family of about six dollars.

Income, $2 a day ; expenses, $1.98— happiness.

Income, $2 a day ; expenses, $2.01— misery.

There is a fine flavor of the Castanea vesca about this ancient joke, yet under its humor is a grim truth. May not the truth about these Connecticut families and many another in like unhappy plight be found— in the garden? The report does not say that these forty-six families had gardens, yet it must be observed that Connecticut is a State of small towns, and that a very large part of the population live in houses having more or less ground. The report does state, on the other hand, that one of the large items in the expenses of these families was for vegetables. These people lost $1.50 a week for each household. Could not that amount have been taken out of their gardens?

It will be said that even if the people had a bit of ground it would not pay to cultivate it, that there was no time for the work in the garden, and that the interest or rent of the land would be too high to admit of profit. Is that so ? No. It is just the other way. In small towns where a house and ground are leased the rent is for the house, and the land is practically free, because if the value of the land becomes too high the houses cover the entire ground or a large part of it, as in a city block. Besides this every house must have space for light and air, and this space is or ought to be a garden. Certainly if a man has space round his house, and he suffers it to go to waste when it might produce food, he is morally responsible for the loss he puts on other men by reason of his unpaid debts. As for the time, it is only a question of getting up earlier or dropping the paper to tickle the ground with a hoe— and better business any day. Seeds, tools and fertilizers are cheap, and if there be a will, there may be both time and a way. All of these families depended in part for their support on the labor of their women and children. Any twelve-year-old boy or girl could have put something from the garden on the family table and been all the better for it. As wages go it may be a question whether any young woman staying at home and minding the garden for three months would not earn more money than she could get in a mill or store. Her house would be her market, her family her customers, and she would reap all the profits.

There are the young folks. Let no young man or young woman fancy their education complete without some knowledge of the growth of plants. Gardening is an accomplishment worth far more than the ability to struggle through a sonata on the piano — more worthy of a lady too. Labor with the hands, in partnership with nature, on the sweet and honest earth, is worthy any gentleman. If there be any among you having a boy or girl, halting between their school books and a wish to climb the Golden Stair, let him consider whether it be better to have hands browned in the glorious sunshine, a face freckled by the blessed winds, clear eyes keen for out-of-door sights and pleasures, a little dirt, beads of salt perspiration, perhaps with a touch of the backache, a jolly appetite and a grand power of sleep, or white hands folded under a coffin lid.

It is the sum of these things that moves me to here set forth how any man, woman or child having a bit of ground may use it for their best health and the greater glory of their dinner table and pocketbook.

^4.

TIMES AND SEASONS.

IS

Chapter III

HE moment we begin to study the lives of plants we are brought face to face with the universe. We cannot consider the verysmall without considering the infinitely great. The life of every plant in our garden hangs on the laws governing the movements of the planets. Every melon vine that lifts its yellow cups in the wa'rm air looks to a star for inspiration, and its fruit claims acquaintance with the sun by the blushes in its melting heart. The roll of our planet to the east divides the day into light and darkness, wherein plants grow and sleep, work and rest. The swinging of our old earth around the solar spaces divides the garden into a time for birth and a time for death. These things we must understand before we plant a single seed.

In all our country the year is divided into two parts, the growing season and the season of slower growth or of complete rest. On the twenty-first of December the sun casts its longest shadows at noon. After that day the days slowly grow longer and the nights shorter until the twenty-first of June. Then the shadows are shortened at noon, the days at their longest, the nights very short. Soon after there is, in the Northern States, a perceptible shortening of the day, which continues till the longest nights late in December again.

All plants, whether out-of-doors or in the house, are susceptible to these universal changes. The spring or growing season begins on the twenty-first of December. The winter or season of reduced growth, maturity, and sleep or death begins on the twenty-first of June. During the growing season the amount of light steadily increases and the plant thrives, because, as it grows, it demands more light. When it is going to rest or approaching maturity, or death, it requires less and less light. The lives of all plants are, therefore, dependent on the changing amount of light resulting from that motion of the earth that gives us the seasons.

At first sight it may seem that this cannot be true. In the latitude of New York nothing begins to grow out-of-doors before April, and all the garden plants are dead or asleep long before December begins. This, too, is true, yet I hope, in treating of certain of our common vegetables, to show you a number of experiments that will prove that this division of the year into two parts is correct. In California the growing season begins in November and ends in May. This, it is easily seen, is merely a variation, depending on local causes, of this same law of plant growth.

To get the best results from our garden vegetables, we sow the seed in the growing season and let the crops mature in the resting season, and this holds good, both under glass, where, as far as temperature is concerned, we are independent of the climate, and in Florida where there are no frosts. After the " return of the sun " we can sow any seeds, provided it is warm enough either naturally or in a greenhouse or sunny window. The days are growing longer, there is more and more light, and the plant finds its

TIMES AND SEASONS. 15

growing stature met by increasing light and (out-of-doors) increasing heat. Seeds of certain plants can indeed be sown in the fall or under glass as late as December, yet they are struggling against the solar tide and are never so thrifty as when the " young flood " of the year sets in. Peas, that are short-lived plants, may be sown out-of-doors in August, and will mature a crop before frost, yet they do not display the vigor shown by plants of the same class planted in April or May.

In the garden and out-of-doors the growing season is, of course, dependent also on the temperature. The spring, even in Vermont or Michigan, begins with the turn of the season, yet it is practically delayed out-of-doors for several months, or till the increasing light and sunshine raises the air to temperatures suitable for growing plants. In like manner the end of the growing season is forstalled by the return of cold weather many weeks before the actual end of the season at Christmas week.

The first thing we have to decide is this : — Can we take advantage of the actual beginning of the growing season without regard to the beginning of spring out-of-doors ? If we can do so, we shall find a very great gain in the matter of early vegetables. Our object must be to get the greatest possible result from our garden, and to do this we must begin the spring work as soon as the season really opens. For instance, the tomato is a native of a tropical climate, where the warm weather begins early and ends late. In the latitude of New York the season out-of-doors is not long enough to bring its crop to maturity. We, therefore, gain time by starting seeds in the house soon after the season turns. The plant being sheltered from the cold and finding the spring really at hand, grows rapidly, and by the time the warm weather has arrived out-of-doors, is several inches high and well advanced in its natural life. In May we remove it from the house to the garden, and it thus reaches its full maturity even in our short out-of-door season. Cultivated in this way it produces its crop in August and September, whereas, if its seed were planted out-of-doors, it would be cut down by October frosts with only half a crop on its branches. It might be thought that the seed could be sown in the house in November and the crop thus be made to mature in June. This would not work, for until the spring really begins, it is nearly useless to attempt to sow seeds in even the warmest house. The young plants would be struggling against the solar tide and wasting their lives for nothing.

These facts in regard to the divisions of the growing year point to the first lesson in all horticultural work. Whatever we do, much or little, whether our garden be large or small, we must be forehanded. We must always look six months ahead, always lay out our work weeks in advance. If we wish tomatoes in August, we must plant the seed in March, and this means soil to put the seeds in, and to have good soil in March we must prepare it in November. Forethought and forework are essential to success in home gardening.

To show what is meant by planning the work in advance, I may from my journal give a few notes as to what was actually done to prepare for the season of 1888. By the first of November the last of the celery in the garden had been taken up, and the ground was left clear of all perishable crops. At odd moments the soil was spaded up and left rough, thus exposing it to the frost and rain to kill the eggs of insects and the seeds of weeds, and by December the out-of-door work was fairly over. The five straw-