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496 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
The School Girl with Her Abounding Energy and
Live Enthusiasm Can Well Take Up a Part of the
Nation's Burdens Back of the Lines
radishes, July twenty-fifth: spinach,
August fifteenth.
Now, some of the statements in this
schedule may sound wrong to the average
practical gardener. Experience,
practice, and his knowledge tell him
some of these may be planted also at
later dates. That is quite true. We are
here considering the production of the
earliest crops normally possible. There
are in all thirty-seven common vegetables
that gardeners are accustomed to harvest
in the autumn, and some of these yield
crops to the number of three or four, in
the days between spring and autumn.
All these are by no means practicable,
however, for our back lot gardener.
Prof. John W. Lloyd, of the Department
of Agriculture, University of Illinois,
has this to say with reference to this
phase of the subject:
"Since planting must be close, and
a large amount of edible product
secured from each square foot of
ground, it will be necessary to omit
from a garden of this kind some of
the larger-growing vegetables which
yield a relatively small edible product
for the amount of space occupied.
Predominance should be given to the
vegetables which produce the largest
amount of edible material in proportion
to the space occupied by the plant
and the length of time this space is
occupied. Sweet corn, melons, and
squashes will therefore be omitted,
and the garden devoted chiefly to such
crops as lettuce, radishes, parsley,
cress, mustard, beets, chard, carrots,
string beans, and turnips. Peas, peppers,
tomatoes, and even cucumbers
may sometimes be included. If tomatoes
and cucumbers are grown they
are trained in an upright position, so
that comparatively little
ground space is occupied.
Tomatoes are most readily
mmrni
supported by tying each
plant to a single stake five or six feet
high, while cucumbers can be trained on
a slightly slanting trellis made of strings
stretched from stakes in the ground to
nails in the top of the fence. In the
case of string beans and wrinkled peas.
larger yields can be obtained from the
same space by growing the tall, rather
than the dwarf varieties, and giving
them the needed support.
"The close planting advised calls for
an abundance of tillage, as well as plant
food and water. Since the rows of the
smaller vegetables are usually too close
together for the use of a rake, a narrowbladed
hoe and a three-fingered weeder
attached to a long handle, are the most
useful tools for working among the
plants. The general principles of tillage
and other care of the growing crops are
the same as in any garden, but the details
of the work are adjusted to meet the
conditions of intensive gardening."
Aside from a tendency to overlook the
necessity of keeping out harmful insects