“3.  Plant vegetables of the same height near together—­tall ones back.

“4.  Run the rows the short way, for convenience in cultivation and because one hundred feet of anything is enough.

“5.  Put the permanent vegetables (asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs) at one side, so that the rest will be easy to plow.

“6.  Practice rotation.  Do not put vines where they were last.  Put corn in a different place.  The other important groups for rotation are root crops (including potatoes and onions); cabbage tribe, peas and beans, tomatoes, eggplant and pepper, salad plants.

“7.  Don’t grow potatoes in a small garden.  They aren’t worth the bother.

“By training on trellis or wire, the smaller fruit plantings can be made much closer.

“If fruits are wanted in the garden, plant a row of apple trees along the northern border, plums and pears on the western sides, cherries and peaches on the eastern side.  Next the apple trees run a grape trellis; and then in succession east and west, run a row of blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants.  These rows, with the apple trees, form a windbreak, and besides adding to the income, protect the vegetables.  Next to the bush fruits, between them and the ends of the vegetable rows, put rhubarb, asparagus, and strawberries.”

Insect pests must be watched for and their destructive work checked.  Ashes, slaked lime, or any kind of dust or powder destroy most insects which prey on the leaves of plants.  The reason for this is that the dust closes the pores through which the insects breathe.  It should therefore be applied when the leaves are dry.

Cutworms can be destroyed by winter plowing.  Rotation of vegetables will reduce the damage from insects, because each family has its peculiar bugs.  By constant change to new soil, the pests have no opportunity to get a foothold.

With bugs, as with boys, only those who are interested in them and therefore understand them can manage them.  It is fun to study the insects—­and it pays.

Here’s another use of “land.”  Maybe a pool in your garden or a dam in a little brook in it may help out your home garden bank account.  Of course a pond a few square yards in extent will give even better returns if you can sell its produce at retail near by.

W. B. Shaw, a seventy-year-old veteran who lost his right arm during the Civil War, lives in Kenilworth, D. C., and clears $1500 an acre every year out of mud puddles—­if mud puddles can be measured by the acre.

Mr. Shaw is a pond lily farmer, and despite his lack of his good right arm, he poles his boat about his mud puddles and gathers in the pond lilies.  His is not exactly a “dry farm” and neither wet nor cloudy weather bothers him.  Furthermore, the demand for his pond lilies in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, and even New York, and Chicago, is greater than he can supply.

Mr. Shaw secured this swamp for almost nothing, as it was considered worthless.  He divided it into fifteen pools with little dams between them, and rollers on the dams to enable him to drag his boat from one to the other.  From May to late in September he is busy every morning gathering lilies.  His average is about 500 a morning, which he ships in little galvanized iron tanks with wet moss.