Home Vegetable Gardening by F. F. Rockwell (books for 6 year olds to read themselves TXT) 📖

CHAPTER VIII.

STARTING THE PLANTS

This beautifully prepared garden spot—or rather the plant food in it—

is to be transformed into good things for your table, through the ever

wonderful agency of plant growth. The thread of life inhering in the

tiniest seed, in the smallest plant, is the magic wand that may

transmute the soil’s dull metal into the gold of flower and fruit.

All the thought, care and expense described in the preceding chapters

are but to get ready for the two things from which your garden is to

spring, in ways so deeply hidden that centuries of the closest

observation have failed to reveal their inner workings. Those two are

seeds and plants. (The sticklers for technical exactness will here take

exception, calling our attention to tubers, bulbs, corns and numerous

other taverns where plant life puts up over night, between growth and

growth, but for our present purpose we need not mind them.)

The plants which you put out in your garden will have been started

under glass from seed, so that, indirectly, everything depends on the

seed. Good seeds, and true, you must have if your garden is to attain

that highest success which should be our aim. Seeds vary greatly—very

much more so than the beginner has any conception of. There are three

essentials; if seeds fail in any one of them, they will be rendered

next to useless. First, they must be true; selected from good types of

stock and true to name; then they must have been good, strong, plump

seeds, full of life and gathered from healthy plants; and finally, they

must be fresh. [Footnote: See table later this chapter] It is therefore

of vital importance that you procure the best seeds that can be had,

regardless of cost. Poor seeds are dear at any price; you cannot afford

to accept them as a gift. It is, of course, impossible to give a rule

by which to buy good seed, but the following suggestions will put you

on the safe track. First, purchase only of some reliable mail-order

house; do not be tempted, either by convenience or cheapness, to buy

the gaily lithographed packets displayed in grocery and hardware stores

at planting time—as a rule they are not reliable; and what you want

for your good money is good seed, not cheap ink. Second, buy of

seedsmen who make a point of growing and testing their own seed. Third,

to begin with, buy from several houses and weed out to the one which

proves, by actual results, to be the most reliable. Another good plan

is to purchase seed of any particular variety from the firm that makes

a leading specialty of it; in many cases these specialties have been

introduced by these firms and they grow their own supplies of these

seeds; they will also be surer of being true to name and type.

Good plants are, in proportion to the amounts used, just as important

as good seed—and of course you cannot afford losing weeks of garden

usefulness by growing entirely from seed sown outdoors. Beets,

cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and for

really efficient gardening, also onions, corn, melons, celery, lima

beans, cucumbers, and squash, will all begin their joyous journey

toward the gardener’s table several weeks before they get into the

garden at all. They will all be started under glass and have attained a

good, thrifty, growing size before they are placed in the soil we have

been so carefully preparing for them. It is next to impossible to

describe a “good” vegetable plant, but he who gardens will come soon to

distinguish between the healthy, short-jointed, deep-colored plant

which is ready to take hold and grow, and the soft, flabby (or too

succulent) drawn-up growth of plants which have been too much pampered,

or dwarfed, weazened specimens which have been abused and starved; he

will learn that a dozen of the former will yield more than fifty of the

latter. Plants may be bought of the florist or market gardener. If so,

they should be personally selected, some time ahead, and gotten some

few days before needed for setting out, so that you may be sure to have

them properly “hardened off,” and in the right degree of moisture, for

transplanting, as will be described later.

By far the more satisfactory way, however, is to grow them yourself.

You can then be sure of having the best of plants in exactly the

quantities and varieties you want. They will also be on hand when

conditions are just right for setting them out.

For the ordinary garden, all the plants needed may be started

successfully in hotbeds and coldframes. The person who has had no

experience with these has usually an exaggerated idea of their cost and

of the skill required to manage them. The skill is not as much a matter

of expert knowledge as of careful regular care, daily. Only a few

minutes a day, for a few sash, but every day. The cost need be but

little, especially if one is a bit handy with tools. The sash which

serves for the cover, and is removable, is the important part of the

structure. Sash may be had, ready glazed and painted, at from $2.50 to

$3.50 each, and with care they will last ten or even twenty years, so

you can see at once that not a very big increase in the yield of your

garden will be required to pay interest on the investment. Or you can

buy the sash unglazed, at a proportionately lower price, and put the

glass in yourself, if you prefer to spend a little more time and less

money. However, if you are not familiar with the work, and want only a

few sash, I would advise purchasing the finished article. In size they

are three feet by six. Frames upon which to put the sash covering may

also be bought complete, but here there is a chance to save money by

constructing your own frames—the materials required, being 2x4 in.

lumber for posts, and inch-boards; or better, if you can easily procure

them, plank 2 x 12 in.

So far as these materials go the hotbed and coldframe are alike. The

difference is that while the coldframe depends for its warmth upon

catching and holding the heat of the sun’s rays, the hotbed is

artificially heated by fermenting manure, or in rare instances, by hot

water or steam pipes.

In constructing the hotbed there are two methods used; either by

placing the frames on top of the manure heap or by putting the manure

within the frames. The first method has the advantage of permitting the

hotbed to be made upon frozen ground, when required in the spring. The

latter, which is the better, must be built before the ground freezes,

but is more economical of manure. The manure in either case should be

that of grain-fed horses, and if a small amount of straw bedding, or

leaves—not more, however, than one-third of the latter—be mixed among

it,