Home Vegetable Gardening, F. F. Rockwell [popular novels .txt] 📗

Formerly it was the custom for gardeners to invest their labors and

achievements with a mystery and secrecy which might well have

discouraged any amateur from trespassing upon such difficult ground.

“Trade secrets” in either flower or vegetable growing were acquired by

the apprentice only through practice and observation, and in turn

jealously guarded by him until passed on to some younger brother in the

profession. Every garden operation was made to seem a wonderful and

difficult undertaking. Now, all that has changed. In fact the pendulum

has swung, as it usually does, to the other extreme. Often, if you are

a beginner, you have been flatteringly told in print that you could

from the beginning do just as well as the experienced gardener.

My garden friend, it cannot, as a usual thing, be done. Of course, it

may happen and sometimes does. You might, being a trusting lamb,

go down into Wall Street with $10,000 [Ed. Note: all monetary values

throughout the book are 1911 values] and make a fortune. You know that

you would not be likely to; the chances are very much against you. This

garden business is a matter of common sense; and the man, or the woman,

who has learned by experience how to do a thing, whether it is

cornering the market or growing cabbages, naturally does it better than

the one who has not. Do not expect the impossible. If you do, read a

poultry advertisement and go into the hen business instead of trying to

garden. I have grown pumpkins that necessitated the tearing down

of the fence in order to get them out of the lot, and sometimes, though

not frequently, have had to use the axe to cut through a stalk of

asparagus, but I never “made $17,000 in ten months from an eggplant in

a city back-yard.” No, if you are going to take up gardening, you will

have to work, and you will have a great many disappointments. All that

I, or anyone else, could put between the two covers of a book will not

make a gardener of you. It must be learned through the fingers, and

back, too, as well as from the printed page. But, after all, the

greatest reward for your efforts will be the work itself; and unless

you love the work, or have a feeling that you will love it, probably

the best way for you, is to stick to the grocer for your garden.

Most things, in the course of development, change from the simple to

the complex. The art of gardening has in many ways been an exception to

the rule. The methods of culture used for many crops are more simple

than those in vogue a generation ago. The last fifty years has seen

also a tremendous advance in the varieties of vegetables, and the

strange thing is that in many instances the new and better sorts are

more easily and quickly grown than those they have replaced. The new

lima beans are an instance of what is meant. While limas have always

been appreciated as one of the most delicious of vegetables, in many

sections they could never be successfully grown, because of their

aversion to dampness and cold, and of the long season required to

mature them. The newer sorts are not only larger and better, but

hardier and earlier; and the bush forms have made them still more

generally available.

Knowledge on the subject of gardening is also more widely diffused than

ever before, and the science of photography has helped wonderfully in

telling the newcomer how to do things. It has also lent an impetus and

furnished an inspiration which words alone could never have done. If

one were to attempt to read all the gardening instructions and

suggestions being published, he would have no time left to practice

gardening at all. Why then, the reader may ask at this point, another

garden book? It is a pertinent question, and it is right that an answer

be expected in advance. The reason, then, is this: while there are

garden books in plenty, most of them pay more attention to the

“content” than to the form in which it is laid before the prospective

gardener. The material is often presented as an accumulation of detail,

instead of by a systematic and constructive plan which will take the

reader step by step through the work to be done, and make clear

constantly both the principles and the practice of garden making and

management, and at the same time avoid every digression unnecessary

from the practical point of view. Other books again, are either so

elementary as to be of little use where gardening is done without

gloves, or too elaborate, however accurate and worthy in other

respects, for an every-day working manual. The author feels, therefore,

that there is a distinct field for the present book.

And, while I still have the reader by the “introduction” buttonhole, I

want to make a suggestion or two about using a book like this. Do not,

on the one hand, read it through and then put it away with the

dictionary and the family Bible, and trust to memory for the

instruction it may give; do not, on the other hand, wait until you

think it is time to plant a thing, and then go and look it up. For

instance, do not, about the middle of May, begin investigating how many

onion seeds to put in a hill; you will find out that they should have

been put in, in drills, six weeks before. Read the whole book through

carefully at your first opportunity, make a list of the things you

should do for your own vegetable garden, and put opposite them the

proper dates for your own vicinity. Keep this available, as a working

guide, and refer to special matters as you get to them.

Do not feel discouraged that you cannot be promised immediate success

at the start. I know from personal experience and from the experience

of others that “book-gardening” is a practical thing. If you do your

work carefully and thoroughly, you may be confident that a very great

measure of success will reward the efforts of your first garden season.

And I know too, that you will find it the most entrancing game you ever

played.

Good luck to you!