This little book has a very definite aim—a big aim too, though two little words or even one will serve to define it—To help, or better still, perhaps—helpfulness. It does not aim to tell everything there is to tell about gardening; that would be encyclopedic and quite out of the scope of a small, practical work on gardening, but it does aim to give, in plain, everyday language sufficient and clear directions for caring for an ordinary kitchen garden in a way the least exhausting of time and strength and with all unnecessary expenditure eliminated. It covers all necessary detail except that of personal equation; that—Dear Woman, when the spring time calls and you go forth full of enthusiasm, is, in the language of the day—"Up to you." Your garden will give back to you just What you put into it—no more, and the more you give to it the less it will exact of you; neglect it ever so little and it willvi prove a hard taskmaster indeed, or a living reproach—a reproach that will burgeon and bloom in noxious weeds and sickening plants, a garden where the worm dieth not and the aphis and grub revel undisturbed and unchecked.
There is nothing so easy as to keep a garden in perfect order, free from weeds and pernicious insect life, nothing easier than to have the reverse of this. One cannot garden successfully on the principle that one can work in the garden when there is nothing else to do, no one to play with, nowhere to go. The garden should be first to a certain extent, and this is not an arbitrary or exacting condition for the toll exacted is paid for many times over in the peace of mind that comes from work well and conscientiously done, to say nothing of the economic value of thrifty vegetables.
There are always critical times in the life of the garden;—the gardener must recognize these and be prepared to give just the assistance the condition requires at just the time it is required; if this is done promptly it will surprise one whovii has had no system heretofore in the garden work to see how little time is really required to care for a garden successfully. The failure to co-operate with nature at the right time may result in many hours of wearisome work.
Take the matter of weeds;—if the planting is closely watched and the weeds cut off as quickly as they show a seed leaf above ground, and before they have stuck their roots deeply enough into the ground to make more than a mere stirring of the soil necessary, an entire week's crop of weeds will be destroyed with one stirring of the soil. Weeds come in relays a week or ten days apart, come not at all if the soil is kept properly stirred—which should be after every rain and between if the rain is infrequent, and it is well worth one's time to exercise a little self-denial and give this cultivation even though it may mean letting something else go that one would like to do.
And one need not worry too much about being scientific in one's gardening; insecticides, fungicides and the like are the allies of the careless gardener, but the wide awake, industrious gardenerviii has little need of them. Healthy, vigorous plants are not especially susceptible to insect attacks and with the exception of potato bugs, squash bugs and cabbage worms the danger from them is merely negligible, but the careless, slovenly gardener is a real and pestilential danger.
There is much in choosing the right time of day for work in the garden; it is delightful to wield the rake and hoe in the cool of the afternoon, but where the object is the destruction of weeds the morning hours of a sunny day will give permanent results as the weeds will be killed by the hot sun, while those hoed up in late afternoon will often be revived by the coolness and dew of night and be ready to withstand the morrow's sun, so take the morning hours for destroying weeds, and the cooler hours for planting seeds, staking up plants, thinning out plants and the like but always the bright, dry sunny hours for tying up such vegetables as need blanching: cauliflower, endive and the like. This will make for success in the various operations and comfort in working.
Where it is necessary to water the garden this should if possible be done after the sun has nearly or quite gone from it in order to reduce the loss of moisture by evaporation; this is especially desirable in city gardens where the water is metered and always, if possible a night's watering should be followed by shallow cultivation the following forenoon to restore the dust-mulch and necessitate as little watering as possible. These are a few of the little attentions which make for success in the garden and minimize the sum of the season's work.