A garden is the personal part of an estate, the area that is most intimately associated with the private life of the home. This guide understands the garden to be that part of the personal or home premises devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits; but you must not make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a garden in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this gardening guide declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings, walks, drives, and fences, should be planted.
One cannot expect satisfaction in the planting and developing of a garden area unless one has a clear conception of what is to be done. This necessarily follows, since the pleasure that one derives from any enterprise depends chiefly on the definiteness of individual ideas and ability to develop them. The details of the planting may be determined in part as the place develops; it is only the structural features and purposes that need to be determined beforehand in most small properties. The incidental modifications that may be made in the planting from time to time keep the interest alive and allow the planter to gratify personal desire to experiment with new plants and new methods.
Sometimes the disappointment in a garden is a result of confusion of ideas as to what a garden is for. Keep in mind that even a flower garden will exhibit the natural progress of the season. If the garden begins to show ragged places and to decline in late August or early September, it is what occurs in all surrounding vegetation. The year is maturing. The garden ought to express the feeling of the different months. The failing leaves and expended plants are therefore to be looked on, to some extent at least, as the natural order and destiny of a good garden.
The Soil and Soil Preparation - The ideal garden soil is what is known as a "rich, sandy loam," at least eight inches deep; if it is deep eighteen it will be even better. It contains the proper proportions of both sand and clay, and further has been put into the best of mechanical condition by good tilth. Read more...
The only way to keep land perfectly unproductive is to keep it moving. The moment the owner lets it alone, the planting has begun. Nature does not allow the land to remain bare and idle. Even the banks where plaster and lath were dumped two or three years ago are now luxuriant with burdocks and sweet clover; and yet persons who pass those dumps every day say that they can grow nothing in their own yard because the soil is so poor! The lesson is that there is no soil (where a house would be built) so poor that something worth while cannot be grown on it. If burdocks will grow, something else will grow; or if nothing else will grow, then we prefer burdocks to sand and rubbish.
~ L. H. Bailey
Whether you are an avid gardener or just starting out, the idea of creating a garden using organic methods can seem overwhelming at first. But organic gardening is less daunting than you may think if you understand some basic principles and can be done right in your own backyard.
There are many reasons why today, more than ever before, every owner of a small place should have his, or her, own garden. The old days of home meat producing, cheese-making, and traditional cooking are gone. The growing of healthy organic vegetables and fruits that taste great cannot be so easy disposed of.
Most things, in the course of development, change from the simple to the complex. The art of gardening has in many ways been an exception to the rule. The methods of culture used for many crops are more simple than those in vogue a generation ago. The last twenty years has seen also a tremendous...
