Home gardening provides pleasure and recreation as well as food — if the home gardener does not try to cultivate more land than he can take care of. Ideal Conditions For Family Gardens Family gardens may range from “two by four” window boxes up to a quarter acre in size, but a garden measuring 50 … Read more
For seven years, I have had the most delicious cantaloupes in abundance at the end of every summer. It started this way: I was talking to a friend who has a small farm. “Care to see my melon patch?” l asked. I saw a 50 by 50 plot planted in cantaloupes, many of them ready … Read more
When Secretary Clinton P. Anderson issued him a call for 20,000,000 Freedom Gardens in 1948, and the food conservation drive was getting underway. Food prices were soaring, and dark clouds of hunger and Communism were hovering over Europe. Since then, the world food situation has not improved. On the contrary, it is worse that prices … Read more
Kohlrabi deserves a better place in our vegetable gardens. It is easily grown and one of the finest vegetables to eat raw. Children love it when it is peeled and sliced fresh from the garden. It is seldom seen in markets. These vegetables lose their fresh, tender flavor and tend to become bitter when they … Read more
We have merely to look at a pretty new house before grass, shrubs, and trees have been planted, or an old house amid neglected surroundings to realize how true it is that a “house is not a home until it’s planted.” When one thinks of all that should be done, it may appear to be … Read more
You can grow vegetables in the littlest garden. Indeed in a plot 20 by 20 feet or smaller, you can raise enough to make gardening more fun and eating more interesting for a family of five. How? With good varieties capable of tiptop yield in small spaces and by succession cropping. Here are the types … Read more
Thickly sown vegetable seeds cause many disappointments in home gardening. The seedlings often come up so crowded that none has a chance for average growth unless the rows are thinned laboriously, often during the week or so after the appearance of the first sprouts. If there has been a delay of only a week or … Read more
There was the year we had roasting cars on July 2. That’s a month to 6 weeks ahead of schedule for central Indiana. For here, our last killing frost is due, on average, in mid-April. So that seed corn went into some pretty cold ground. It’s popularly supposed that many seeds won’t germinate in the … Read more
Few plain dirt gardeners can visualize kale, the richest vitamin of the pot herbs, as a foliage plant for the flower border. Japanese horticulturists came up with ornamental kales more colorful than coleus. In Japan, ornamental kales are so highly valued that they take the place of summer bedding plants in the Emperor’s garden during … Read more
A vegetable garden may not have the same glamour and appeal as a flower border. Still, one that is well-planned produces dividends in the way of quality and flavor that are practically unobtainable even in the best food markets. It has been stated many times that there is no substitute for homegrown corn, peas, and … Read more