A Good Garden With a Lot Less Work
Seven fundamentals and ideas on having a good garden with a lot less work, from the Have-More Plan
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
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Frost dates for western states vary according to elevation as well as latitude. Accurate dates can be had by writing your State College of Agriculture or Weather Bureau.
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EVEN before the victory garden boom there were so many books, articles, pamphlets on gardening that garden writers seemed to be having quite a time of it trying to be original. For example, I have in front of me a cute article in one of the "garden and home" magazines explaining how you can have cucumbers climb a fence, use carrots for borders, and make a tepee for the children by planting pole beans.
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Well, maybe garden articles like that appeal to some folks, but what we wanted at our place was somebody to tell us how to raise a lot of vegetables with as little work as possible.
We weren't interested in gardening as a hobby. We wanted to make it pay and believed we could. We knew that out of every dollar's worth of vegetables my wife bought at the store 60 cents went for marketing and handling.
Our first garden was small - about 30 by 40 feet. We simply dug up the ground, mixed in a little all-purpose commercial fertilizer, bought some seeds at "the corner drug store" - and, needless to say, our garden was pretty much of a flop. Some vegetables grew fairly well, but most didn't. And the insects got more out of it than we did.
We were discouraged. Like many city people we thought a garden was "duck soup". But we've found out that our garden is our most exacting and complex project. Producing eggs, or chickens, or milk, or honey, or pork requires less knowledge than having a good garden. The one especially attractive point about a garden is that even though it is complicated and considerable work, it does not have to be tended every day or twice a day as do livestock. At any rate I wanted to say, don't let your gardening difficulties discourage you from considering livestock projects - it's easier to produce a dozen eggs than a bunch of carrots.
Before we planted our second garden we made up our minds to find out how to do it. I guess maybe we studied a hundred books and pamphlets. Or rather, after reading the first dozen, we skimmed through the rest. We found ourselves reading and rereading the same basic facts.
After our reading, we went ahead with a much larger garden. We planted according to plan and beginning in May had all the fresh vegetables we could eat. In addition, we canned and froze about 275 quarts for winter use. According to Carolyn's figures, our garden saved about $200 - that's $200 over the $22.50 we spent for plowing, seeds, fertilizer, and spray.
Looking back over our experience, we have singled out certain fundamentals and ideas we would like to pass along because we believe they will be helpful to anyone interested in having a good garden with less work.
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