As for the vegetable garden, keep it small.  The new country dweller’s first garden is usually three times the size needed or that he can take care of.  Vegetables have a way of either producing nothing or bearing in such abundance that the average family is swamped in plenty.  Whether or not the excess is canned, depends on the time and energy of the housewife or her cook.  With green vegetables now available the year around, there are two schools of thought as to the real economy of home canning.  There is even plenty of controversy over the question of a family vegetable garden.  Some hold that after the normal charges for fertilizer, seeds and labor are met, any vegetables that may result actually cost far more than if bought in the retail market.  To this the pro-gardenites retort that the charges for seeds and fertilizer are small and that a certain amount of struggle with spade and hoe is good for a man who has spent all day in a stuffy office.  Let him do his own spading, cultivating, and planting.  A half hour or so every evening will keep the garden free of weeds and, in due time, vegetables fresh from the garden will result.  They will be superior in flavor and will actually have cost less than even the largest chain stores can afford to sell them for.

Out of ten years’ experience, we can only state that both are right in a measure.  Whether or not a vegetable garden pays, breaks even, or goes into the red, depends to a large degree on the owner himself.  If he has a flair for making things grow and has a definite amount of time to devote to them, his garden will not only thrive but pay dividends.  But if a business trip is imperative just at the time the garden should be planted, or some pressing engagement causes him to defer transplanting his cabbages and his tomato plants beyond the proper time, he must either get some one to take care of his garden or do without one.  There is a lure, however, to having your own vegetables, so most of us close our eyes to any distressing figures on the household ledger and go ahead and have a garden anyway.

One busy man compromises by having his garden prepared for planting by a local man of all work who also keeps his grass cut and his borders trimmed.  Then he plants a few easily grown and tended vegetables, such as lettuce, parsley, string beans, carrots, spinach, crookneck squash, tomatoes, and corn.  Around these, like a border, he plants showy annuals like zinnias, cosmos, calendula, marigolds and so forth.  His garden is a colorful, attractive spot.  He has vegetables for the table and plenty of flowers for cutting.  The latter preclude any argument over whether his garden pays since, oddly enough, the subject of a flower garden never seems to take a mercenary turn.