The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming Part 11

Use a trowel for this work, gently lifting plants and earth. A drill may be made; or, perhaps better yet, make holes with the dibber. Pour a little water into the hole. Then gently separate a plant taking as much soil with it as you can keep on its roots. Place the little plant in the hole or drill, and cover the roots with soil. With the fingers press the soil firmly about the plant. Water the earth, not the leaves of the plant. Next day, and for several days, cover the transplanted plants with strawberry baskets. These are far better than newspaper coverings, because light and air freely come through the crevices of the basket.

The newspaper makes a covering too tight and close for the tender lettuces. Between plants the children left six inches.

Jack raised Boston lettuce. He not only had enough for his mother all summer long, but sold some, too. The way he happened to sell it was merely an accident. Not far from the village was a large summer hotel.

One day the proprietor had driven around to the house to see Jack's father on business. As the men were talking Jack and Elizabeth came from the garden with two fine heads of lettuce.

"Have you any more lettuce than what you can use yourself?" asked the proprietor, after feeling of the heads of lettuce and admiring the good firm centres. "Yes," replied Jack, "I have now, and shall have all along, more than we can use. You see I keep making sowings every ten days in the coldframe, and transplanting."

"I'll take all the extra lettuce you have at five cents a head. That is what I pay all summer long for it. To-morrow bring me up what you can."

"Thank you, sir. Ten heads will walk up to-morrow."

"The first time I've ever heard of heads walking," laughed Jack's father, well pleased with his lad.

But we are away ahead of the story, for we have planted and sold lettuce before Jack has had a chance to really make his garden. The soil in the backyard was very poor, so Jack decided to cultivate only a strip twenty feet long and eight feet wide. He dug out all the soil to the depth of two feet. His father lent him the use of a horse and wagon, and gave him from the barns whatever fertilizer he needed. The digging was a long, tedious piece of work. It was hard, too; but the boy kept at it.

Any piece of land can be used if a boy has a mind to work hard over it.

Some of the poorest of the soil was carted off, then into the top of the remaining soil he mixed the old manure. Then into the garden s.p.a.ce six inches of manure was spread, and over this was filled in the old top soil and fertilizer, that mixture which he had previously prepared.

About one foot of this was put in. Jack's father lent him the horse again and the services of a man. They drove to the Longmeadow Farm and got a load of top soil. Old Mr. Mills said he would give the soil if Jack could answer three garden questions correctly.

"All right," said the boy, "you'll probably knock me over, for I don't know much about gardening, but I'm trying hard."

"Question number one: suppose your backyard had been clay soil--what would you have done with it then?"

"I should have mixed in sand, using about one-quarter the amount of sand as I had of clay."

"Good! Question number two: suppose you had no sand--what then?"

"I'd have used ashes; old clinkers I guess would be best. Everyone has ashes."

"Question number three: what is the object of mixing sand or coal ashes or clinkers with clay."

"The reason is to break up the clay. Clay bakes hard, becomes sticky, and little air or light gets into it. Ash or sand breaks it up. I think that's about all I know about this."

"The soil is yours, young man, I shall be around to see your garden some day. Remember good gardening means working your muscles hard."

"Thank you, Mr. Mills. By the way my arms and legs ache, I guess I know about muscles."

"And remember too," continued Mr. Mills, "that certain vegetables are very closely related and will intermingle. For example, do not plant different kinds of corn close together. The pollen from one kind will fertilize another kind and so you get a crossing which results in a mongrel sort of corn. Melons and cuc.u.mbers will do the same thing. And so care must be taken in order that this sort of intermingling does not take place. You see, Jack, that there are many things a real good gardener has to consider. Gardening is not only a matter of soil preparation but it is also a matter of understanding plants and their relations one to the other."

So the good soil was put on and Jack was ready for business. Straight across the back was planted a row of sunflowers. Sunflower seeds belong under the head of large seeds, and should be planted one inch deep and one foot apart. Two seeds were placed in together. This is a safe plan, because if one fails to come up, the other doubtless will come up. If both appear, when the plants get about three inches high, pull out the weaker one.

Then the boy planted a second row two feet from the first one. The first row was planted close up to the fence. Jack found out that this was a mistake. Always leave all about the garden a s.p.a.ce of a foot or so, in order that one may walk about freely and get at the rear row of plants without trouble. Again, do not plant too close to a fence, unless the planting be some vine or climbing plant, which you desire to have cover the fence.

Next the aster plants were transplanted. This was done after the same manner as the lettuce. They were placed about one foot apart each way.

These were put across the entire spot just as the sunflowers had been.

Thirty-two little aster plants were set out and still Jack had a number left over. It is amazing the amount of aster plants one can raise from a little packet of seeds. "I'm going to sell the rest of these aster plants," he declared. And he did. The boy tramped about until he found a lady desiring the plants, to whom he sold 50 little plants for $1 and set them out for 50 cents.

The rest of the garden s.p.a.ce was used for the onions, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes and radish.

The onions transplanted from the coldframe gave fine early onions with a mild flavour.

When Jack was making furrows for the sunflower seed Jay came along and leaned over the fence. "Jack," he drawled, "you look like a kangaroo all humped over making that furrow. Why don't you use your hoe right?"

"I thought I was using it right. Come in here and show me how, will you?"

So Jay jumped the fence and picked up the hoe. "Stand this way! Straddle the furrow with your back in the direction you are going to hoe; or else stand on the left side of the furrow facing it. Grasp the handle of the hoe in the right hand near the upper end. The back of your hand should be up. Now the left hand should be a foot or more below the other hand.

And see the back of my hand. It is toward the left and my thumb points down the handle, just so with the rake handle."

All summer long the boy worked or cultivated his piece of land. He kept hoeing and weeding constantly.

One of the August pieces of work was to fix the hotbed for winter. Now the frame was taken up and the pit dug deeper--about two feet this time.

Previous to this a great pile of manure had been heaped up near by. Jack had sprinkled it with hot water to start fermentation. Steam rising from the heap was proof of this, and it may be used at this time.

Then the manure was put into the pit. An eighteen-inch bed of it was made and firmly tramped down. At first the temperature of this was over one hundred degrees. When it dropped to ninety-five degrees soil was put on. The temperature was taken by means of a thermometer buried in the manure. The frame was placed after two inches of soil had been put in; then four more inches went on. The surface of the soil was made to slope at the same angle as the gla.s.s. All about the frame was banked, again, manure covered with earth and leaf matter.

Jack transplanted violet plants into one compartment. These were good violets and were placed four inches apart. In the second bed he sowed foxglove, pansy and stock. The third was left for radish and lettuce, a bit later.

Elizabeth helped him sew together several thicknesses of straw matting as covering for the winter nights. They had decided that newspapers next the gla.s.s, then the mats, and finally a rubber blanket, would be protection sufficient.

But Jack's hotbed work is quite another story. However, I can tell you that the next winter he added two other frames to this one.

X

ALBERT AND JAY'S DRAINAGE PROBLEM.

The problem of draining which Albert and Jay had to consider, was perhaps the biggest piece of work that was done all that spring. In the first place, it should have been done in the fall. That is the time to do such work, for if put off until spring it delays greatly the spring planting.

It was a wet spring, too. The boys, rather impatient of waiting, started digging one day, but it ended in disaster. The ground was soft and wet and hence very heavy to handle. This piece of land was one hundred feet wide or deep. It had a frontage of one hundred and fifty feet. A slope rose up in front of it, which accounted for the water being drained onto this land. The water naturally would have run off the land into a brook at the back. But in about the centre was a hollow, and beyond that the ground rose a little, and then dropped toward the brook. The depression made a kind of drain hole and the water settled there all the spring through.

This strip of land of the boys was not by any means the entire piece of land, which was much larger, but the boys' father had given them this largely to try their mettle. He felt so certain they could not do it that he said they might have all they needed from a pile of drain pipe he intended to use himself on a piece of wet land the next fall. "I shall have all my drain pipe left to me," he said to the boys' mother one night. She smiled, for the boys had talked matters over a bit with her.

Myron's strawberry bed was all made, Jack's garden-filling work done, George's ploughing and planting finished, before the boys could lay the drain.

"It's no use," said Albert, "I'm ready to give up."

"Now Savage, there's to be no quitting. I'd be ashamed of you, at least we can surprise father."

"All right, Jay, I'm with you."

Finally the day came when The Chief and the boys started work. A drain pipe should be laid ordinarily anywhere from twenty inches to three feet deep. One may dig or plough to make the trench. It is wise to dig as narrow a trench as possible and so lift as little soil as possible.

Then, too, the bed of the drain should slope gradually from the upper or highest point to the lowest. The drop in level should be about four inches per hundred feet. So the boys had to consider just this. This is the way they "sighted" to get the drop in level. They drove a stake into the ground at some twenty feet from the place where the drain was to begin. Previously a cord had been stretched from one end of the centre of the field to the other end. Since the centre of the field seemed to be the place for the deposit of water the drain was to go directly through the centre.

If you ever have a piece of draining to do the problem may not be so simple as this. You may find several natural drainage areas. Then you must lay drains through these. Or instead of separate drains make side ones which empty into a main drain.

Going back again to the "sighting" for the drain bed level--the boys have driven a stake into the ground. It stands five feet above the ground level. If a tree had been in line with the drain line this might have been used and saved driving the stakes. Across the stake, at right angles to it, a board with a perfectly straight edge was nailed. This board was about four feet long, one end pointed at the drain line. At the other end Jay placed his eye looking across this to where Albert had driven stakes.