A Good Garden With a Lot Less Work
(Page 5 of 7)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
5. Irrigation
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Probably more harm than good is done by water applied to home gardens. In arid and semi-arid localities watering is, of course, not only necessary, but a whole subject in itself. However, in most sections of the country, except for occasional droughts, a good rain every ten days is all any garden needs. Light sprinkling is bad. If rain does not come, one of the best and easiest ways to water is a rotary sprinkler attached to end of your garden hose and held in one spot for at least an hour. The ground thus soaked needs no more water for ten days to two weeks of dry weather. Cultivate soil after rain but not until surface dries out.
6. Harvest When Tender
Vegetables don't grow evenly from day to day - a warm day following a good rain may push vegetables ahead as much as a number of days not suited to growth. You must inspect the garden every day as vegetables begin to ripen. Pick most on the tender side - they'll taste even better if they're not quite as large as the longer, older, heavy type you are accustomed to buying in the store. Particularly when canning, choose the tender. Never pick ahead of time - wait until just before you're going to use them before bringing fresh vegetables from the garden. Try putting the water on to boil before you pick sweet corn - and cook it only 7-8 minutes for one of nature's most tasty feasts!
7. Keep Your Ground Planted in Green
As soon as your last vegetables are out of the ground in the fall, roughen up the soil and plant rye. This will get a good start before winter and grow again in early spring. When you are ready to plant in spring, incorporate this green manure into the top surface of the soil by disc harrow, or by fork and hoe. This green manure will decay fast when left in top soil and provide natural plant food for your seeds.
Hints for Easier Gardening
New land almost always requires lime to alkalize the acid content resulting from leaf decay, etc. Your soil test will show whether or not your soil is acid or alkaline and tell you specifically how much lime or possibly its opposite, aluminum sulphate it needs.
An easy way to see that plants get proper amounts of lime is to divide the garden into four sections and lime one section heavily for vegetables in the first group, lime second section moderately, etc.
Natural or Artificial Manure? There is, as probably many of you know, practically a pitched battle going on amongst two groups of Agricultural Experts as to whether or not fertility is best kept up by use of artificial (chemical) fertilizers or organic substances. The "organic" group ask, "Are Chemical Fertilizers Ruining our Health?" They believe that only properly composted organic matter and barnyard manure should be used to preserve the soil's fertility. On the other hand, certain advocates of chemical fertilizers advocate "soil-less culture" - or growing vegetables solely in chemical solutions. The extreme in either method is costly. Generally, as far as we can judge, soil-less culture certainly seems a passing fad; and more and more attention seems to be given to methods of keeping the soil fertile by putting back manure and humus.
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