CARPET YOUR GARDEN

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by JOHN KRILL

If you're young and lazy, old and feeble or just plain busy . . . you can reap rich garden harvests on slim expenditures of time and physical exertion by putting a rug in your produce patch. What's more, this gardening method requires no tilling of the soil, no cultivating, no weeding and no machinery in the form of tractors or gas powered tillers. The technique will allow you—in a matter of hours—to start a vegetable plot that will literally maintain itself, even on tough sod. Only the fall frosts will put an end to such a garden's unattended productivity.

Most of the few things you'll need for this "no work" way of gardening can be found at residential curbsides on rubbish disposal days or in the town dump: one or more discarded rugs, a knife, a spade, a wheelbarrow and—if it's available—some compost or manure.

Spread the carpet or carpets bottom-side-up on your garden site in the fall or at least a month before planting time in the spring. The covering will soon choke out all the grass and weeds beneath it, eliminating the need to plow or till the soil.

When you're ready to plant, cut one-foot squares from the rug, as shown in Fig. 1. For tomatoes, space the squares three feet apart in rows three feet apart. Separate the planting holes by two feet in each direction for green peppers, cucumbers and cantaloupes. Remember to leave a broad margin of carpet around the edges on which the cucumber, melon and other vines may spread (Fig. 2).

Place your wheelbarrow near each freshly-cut-out square and dig a 15" deep hole at every location (Fig. 3). Dump the soil into the barrow, mix it 50-50 with manure or compost, and fill each excavation with the mixture. Be sure to tamp all but the last four inches of the soil-compost combination well as you refill the holes. This will prevent later settling that might leave your plants sitting in depressions. New plants form poor root systems in compacted soil, however, so the top four-inch layer of each little plot must be left loose to allow each plant to establish itself quickly and vigorously.