Necessities Of The Home Vegetable Garden

By Author: Gail Greene
Total Articles: 9
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In deciding upon the location for the home vegetable garden it is well to dispose of once and for all of the old-fasinoned concept that the garden "patch" needs to be an unsightly site in the home surroundings. If thoughtfully organized, meticulously planted and thoroughly taken care of, it can be made a attractive and harmonious element of the general theme, providing a hint of comfy homeliness that no hedges, borders, or beds can ever produce.

Keeping this truth in mind we will not feel restricted to any part of the grounds solely because it is out of sight in back of the shed or garage. In the typical moderate-sized site there will not be a lot of options regarding real estate. It might be unavoidable to take what is to be had and then do the best that may be accomplished with it. Still there will in all likelihood be a good deal of choice regarding, first, exposure, and second, convenience. Additional things being equal, choose a place close at hand, very easy of access. It may appear that a difference of only a few 100 yards will mean nothing, but if one is relying mostly ...
... upon spare moments for working in and for caring for the garden and in the growing of many vegetables the latter is really as vital as the former this matter of handy access will be of much greater importance than is likely to be at first recognized. Not until you have had to make a dozen time-wasting trips for forgotten seeds or tools, or gotten your feet soaking wet by going out through the dew-drenched grass, will you realize fully what this may mean.

Exposure.
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But the matter of paramount importance to consider in choosing the place that is to yield you happiness and delectable veggies all summer, or even for many years, is the exposure. Identify the "earliest" spot you can find a plot sloping a little to the south or east, that seems to get sunshine early and hold it late, and that appears to be out of the direct path of the freezing north and northeast winds. If a structure, or even an old fence, shields it from this direction, your garden will be helped along wonderfully, for an early start is a great big factor toward effectiveness. If it is not currently protected, a board fence, or a hedge of some low-growing shrubs or young evergreens, will add substantially to its effectiveness. The import of having such a protection or shelter is altogether underrated by the beginner.

The soil.
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The odds are that you won't find a spot of perfect garden soil ready for use anywhere on your site. Nevertheless all except the very worst of soils may be brought up to a very high degree of productiveness particularly such small-sized spots as home vegetable gardens require. Large plots of soil that are almost pure sand, and others so heavy and mucky that for centuries they lay untilled, have often been brought, over only a few years, to where they produce annually tremendous crops commercially . So do not be disheartened about your soil. Proper treatment of it is much more important, and a garden-patch of typical run-down, or "never-brought-up" soil will yield much more for the energetic and careful gardener than the richest spot will grow under average techniques of cultivation.

The perfect garden soil is a "rich, sandy loam." And the fact can not be overemphasized that such soils typically are made, not found. Let us analyze that explanation a bit, for right here we get the first of the four essential aspects of gardening sustenance. The others are cultivation, moisture and temperature. "Rich" in the gardener's jargon means filled with plant food; more than that and this is a point of crucial importance it means full of plant food ready to be utilized at once, all prepared and spread out on the garden table, or rather in it, where fruits and vegetables can quickly make use of it; or what we term, in one word, "available" plant food. Virtually no soils in populated neighborhoods continue to be naturally rich enough to yield substantial crops. They are made rich, or kept rich, in two ways; at the outset, by cultivation, which helps to transform the raw plant food stored in the soil into available forms; and second, by manuring or adding plant food to the soil from outside sources.

"Sandy" in the sense here used, implies a soil containing enough particles of sand so that water will pass through it without leaving it pasty and gummy a few days after a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under usual conditions, will crumble and fall apart easily after being squeezed in the palm. It is not necessary that the soil be sandy in appearance, but it needs to be friable.

"Loam: a rich, friable soil," says Webster. That hardly covers it, but it does explain it. It is soil in which the sand and clay are in proper proportions, so that neither greatly dominate, and generally dark in coloring, from cultivation and enrichment. Such a soil, even to the unskilled eye, just naturally seems as if it would grow things. It is remarkable how rapidly the entire physical appearance of a piece of well cultivated ground will change. A particular case came under my notice last fall in one of my fields, where a strip consisting of an acre had been 2 years in onions, and a little piece jutting off from the middle of this had been prepared for them just one season. The remainder had not gotten any additional manuring or cultivation. When the terrain was plowed up in the fall, all 3 sections were as clearly noticeable just as if separated by a fence. And I know that following spring's crop of rye, just before it is plowed under, will show the lines of separation just as obviously.

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