HOME GARDEN'S EXPERTS DESIGN A VEGETABLE MINI-GARDEN FOR $10
(Page 2 of 4)
May/June 1974
By the Mother Earth News editors
Some old pros may say that we have things too cramped and there is not enough room between the rows. Our rows may be quite dose together, but since the garden is only 10 feet wide it can be cultivated from the side, and outside of harvesting there is no need for wide rows which are used for wheel hoes or even power cultivators.
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Our garden received full sunlight all day. This is a requirement for all vegetables and it is difficult to obtain any appreciable harvest unless the plants do get ample fight.
Although our garden was prepared with a power tiller it is small enough to be spaded by hand. The area was formerly a lawn and when it was tilled, all the remaining sod was worked in as a form of organic matter. After tilling, the area was fertilized at the same rate as the trial gardens at Fordhook Farms.
The garden was almost fully planted at all times during the season. This was accomplished by a succession of plantings. Where there were quick-growing early crops, they were followed by another sowing. Several crops, such as the cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and cabbages were in place all during the summer, but most of these provided pickings over a long period.
TOMATOES
We used two different varieties of tomatoes. For the main crop we grew Burpee's VF. This variety is well adapted for home garden use because it is resistant to the two most common tomato diseases ... verticillium and fusarium. Plants were started indoors and the plants set out. It may be difficult to find started plants of some of these varieties so it may be necessary to start your own. But because we only used six plants, it is not beyond the efforts of a homeowner to start them. Also bear in mind that it's much better not to start them too early. For mid-May planting outdoors you can start seedlings indoors as late as April 1.
We also used three plants of a small cherry tomato-Basket Pak- -which bear heavily and are an ideal salad addition.
In addition to the varieties that we grew, some substitutes for VF could be Park's Whopper, Terrific or Burpee's Big Boy.
Substitutes for the Basket Pak tomato would be Red Cherry. Small Fry or Sugar Lump (which has a distinctive
ZUCCHINI
This may be a questionable vegetable in our small garden, but it proved to be one of the best performers. Seed was direct-sown on May 15 and was bearing profusely from only two plants starting the first week in July and continuing nonstop right into September.
The variety we used-and type we recommend-is the bush zucchini. This is an ideal vegetable for a small garden because the young fruits can be eaten raw in salads as a companion to, or substitute for, cucumbers. Later in the year the larger fruits can be cooked conventionally as squash.
