THE GARDEN

We now approach that part of the acre to which its possessor will probably give his warmest and most frequent thoughts—­the garden.  If properly made and conducted, it will yield a revenue which the wealth of the Indies could not purchase; for whoever bought in market the flavor of fruit and vegetables raised by one’s own hands or under our own eyes?  Sentiment does count.  A boy is a boy; but it makes a vast difference whether he is our boy or not.  A garden may soon become a part of the man himself, and he be a better man for its care.  Wholesome are the thoughts and schemes it suggests; healthful are the blood and muscle resulting from its products and labor therein.  Even with the purse of a millionaire, the best of the city’s markets is no substitute for a garden; for Nature and life are here, and these are not bought and sold.  From stalls and pedlers’ wagons we can buy but dead and dying things.  The indolent epicure’s enjoyment of game is not the relish of the sportsman who has taken his dinner direct from the woods and waters.

I am often told, “It is cheaper to buy fruit and vegetables than to raise them.”  I have nothing to say in reply.  There are many cheap things that we can have; experience has proved that one of the best things to have is a garden, either to work in or to visit daily when the season permits.  We have but one life to live here, and to get the cheapest things out of it is a rather poor ambition.

There are multitudes who can never possess an acre, more or less, and who must obtain Nature’s products at second hand.  This is not so great a misfortune as to have no desire for her companionship, or wish to work under her direction in dewy mornings and shadowy evenings.  We may therefore reasonably suppose that the man who has exchanged his city shelter for a rural home looks forward to the garden with the natural, primal instinct, and is eager to make the most of it in all its aspects.  Then let us plunge in medias res at once.

The ideal soil for a garden is a mellow, sandy loam, underlaid with a subsoil that is not too open or porous.  Such ground is termed “grateful,” and it is not the kind of gratitude which has been defined as “a lively appreciation of favors to come,” which is true of some other soils.  This ideal land remembers past favors; it retains the fertilizers with which it has been enriched, and returns them in the form of good crops until the gift is exhausted; therefore it is a thrifty as well as a grateful soil.  The owner can bring it up to the highest degree of fertility, and keep it there by judicious management.  This sandy loam—­Nature’s blending of sand and clay—­is a safe bank.  The manure incorporated with it is a deposit which can be drawn against in fruit and vegetables, for it does not leach away and disappear with one season’s rains.

Light, thin, sandy soil, with a porous or gravelly subsoil, is of a very different type, and requires different treatment.  It is a spendthrift.  No matter how much you give it one year, it very soon requires just so much more.  You can enrich it, but you can’t keep it rich.  Therefore you must manage it as one would take care of a spendthrift, giving what is essential at the time, and in a way that permits as little waste as possible.  I shall explain this treatment more fully further on.