The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 292 pages of information about The Library of Work and Play.

The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 292 pages of information about The Library of Work and Play.

Did you ever try the Icicle radish?  Myron recommends it.  It is long and white and so gets its name.  Along with the radish he planted parsley.  This is a good way to do as these vegetables do not interfere one with the other.

“Grow any more lettuce and radish?” exclaimed Myron’s father one evening in the village store, “not while I have a boy who can do it as Myron can.  He beats me all right.  And I am glad.”

IX

JACK’S ALL-ROUND GARDEN

Just as soon as the ground was workable Jack set his coldframe.  He chose
a southern exposure, back of the barn, so that the frame should sit up
against the stone foundation of the I. Constructing a wall to form an embankment. 
    II.  Cleaning the grounds and making a lawn. 
    III.  Planting of trees. 
    IV.  Preparation and planting of the flower garden. 
    V. Cleaning and mending the road. building.  First he dug down about a
foot deep.  As he dug, he knocked up the lumps and picked out the stone. 
Then he went to the barn and got a barrow load of horse manure, not
fresh, but old, rotted manure.  This he very carefully mixed in with the
soil already made fine.

“Now I shall put the frame on.  Come, Elizabeth, and give me a lift with this.”  After some tugging the frame was set.

“I thought frames were usually sunk in the ground,” commented Elizabeth.

“I shall do that this fall and make a real hotbed out of it.  You see this spring I just want to give my seeds a little extra start.  That’s why I made the soil so rich and so deep.  Now I am going to bank the frame about with manure.  Then I shall put dirt over that.  You see I get some extra heat that way.  Just see the fine slope of the glass.  I guess Old Sun will get caught all right.”

Jack busily banked the frame, spanking the fertilizer down hard with the back of his spade.  He sloped it up some four inches along the sides and front.

“Now I am going to make drills for my seed.  In the first partition I shall plant lettuce and tomato; then pepper and onion go in, and the third is for flower seed.”  Jack bent over the frame, and began to scratch lengthwise of the beds with the edge of his trowel.  Red-faced from bending over, and hot from his former exertion, his trouser knees covered with earth and manure, he stood off and looked at his work.

“I’m precious glad Elizabeth has gone, for if those aren’t the worst, crookedest old rows I ever saw.”

And so they were.  They were all distances apart, of different depths and entirely untidy-looking.

Jack picked up his rake and again raked the little beds over, so that no trace of his poor work was left.  Then he found a board which stretched across the frame widthwise, so that he could kneel upon this and work to advantage in the bed.  He next whittled out two little pointed sticks to act as stakes, and tying to these a piece of cord just the right length for the drills, he was ready for work.  With one stake stuck in the bed at the upper end, the other at the lower, the cord between gave Jack a good string line for the drill.  Then, with the end of a small round stick held close against the taut line, the drill was made.  So he continued making drills at distances of four inches apart.

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The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.