E. Brown - Make Your Garden Feed You

A concise, practical book on gardening, poultry, rabbit-breeding, and bee-keeping in war-time conditions.

Clearly illustrated in black and white.

Cover Page

Title Page Make Your Garden Feed You E. T. Brown A concise, practical book on gardening, poultry, rabbit-breeding, and bee-keeping in war-time conditions. Clearly illustrated in black and white.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK HOW TO USE THIS BOOK Many are the difficulties that beset the person equipped for the first time with a spade, a packet of seeds, and a plot of soil. “How deep must I plant them?” “Do they need watering?” “What will they look like when they come up?” These are only a few of the questions that dismay the novice. The experienced gardener in war-time is in little better position. He knows the way he has always gone about his tasks, he knows when to put his seeds in and what to do with the seedlings when they appear. But now he ought to ask himself: “ Is my garden yielding as much per square foot as it should do ? ” “ Am I getting the best possible results in the shortest time or could I perhaps do better if I changed my methods ? ” In addition, he has two very big problems—what to use for manures now that many kinds are unobtainable, and how to curtail waste which was previously unimportant but now is criminal. Answers to all these questions could be discovered eventually by experiment—the process of trial and error. But at a time of national emergency there is neither leisure nor material for this method. The necessary information has to be acquired quickly and with the minimum of effort. Make Your Garden Feed You has been written to meet this need. The book is severely practical. The author takes a plot of ground—90 feet by 60 feet—and shows exactly how it must be arranged and treated to make it yield the maximum amount of food for the minimum expenditure of money and labour. He explains why it is economical to keep fowls, rabbits, and bees, in addition to growing vegetables and fruit, and he gives sound advice on how to overcome the war-time difficulties of manuring the ground and feeding the livestock. The best way to use this book is to read it straight through as far as the end of the section on vegetable growing, and to spend half an hour or so absorbing the details of the plan shown on pages 2 and 3. The next step is to adapt the author’s arrangement to suit your own garden or allotment. You may have to leave out the fruit trees or decide bee-keeping is unsuitable in your neighbourhood. But the main features of the scheme—especially the inclusion of three vegetable plots—can be kept for any garden, whatever its size or special peculiarities. If you only have room for one or two rows of vegetables you can plan to grow different crops from one year to the next.

TO PLAN YOUR CROPS TO PLAN YOUR CROPS WHATEVER the shape and size of your allotment or garden, you are advised to decide where everything you intend to grow is to be planted before you start. Similarly the sites of the shed, greenhouse, manure heap, etc., should all be chosen at the outset. The diagram given here (Fig. 1) shows the layout recommended for a plot measuring 90 ft. by 60 ft. If your allotment or garden plot is smaller you should not have much difficulty in adapting the layout to suit your individual need. For instance, if your plot measures go ft. by 45 ft. and you propose to go in for all the four departments of food production, all it means is that the three vegetable plots will be 27 ft. by 28 ft. instead of 42 ft. by 28 ft.

TOOLS TO MAKE OR BUY TOOLS TO MAKE OR BUY IF the allotment or garden plot is to be cultivated properly a certain number of tools is necessary. The list is a fairly long one, and if all are purchased by each individual gardener it runs away with a lot of money. There are certain tools which are in frequent use, such as a spade, fork and hoe, and these should certainly be bought. It is suggested, however, that many of the others might well be bought by a number of allotment-holders and used on a communal basis. Failing this, an agreement might be come to for one to purchase one or two articles, another one or two different ones, and so on. For example, a syringe, garden hose, and a spraying machine are required now and again, but not sufficiently often to warrant individual purchase. It must be for war-time gardeners to decide which tools should be bought outright and which obtained collectively; so perhaps it is better to enumerate the different ones and give brief particulars regarding them.

SPADE-WORK AND SOWING SPADE-WORK AND SOWING IN many districts the local authorities are taking over large tracts of land and converting them into allotments. As a general rule, the area is simply measured off into plots, and those who take them over have to do all the necessary “spade-work”; and spade-work it is, in very truth. Before dealing with the usual routine work connected with vegetable-growing it may be advisable to say something regarding the best way of turning a piece of rough land into an allotment. Quite apart from the nature and texture of the land itself its condition must be considered. The new allotment site may be either a piece of old grassland or waste ground. These require rather different treatment to bring them into a productive state. If the area of ground allotted to you consists of turfed land, the first job is to remove the sods. This means a considerable amount of work, but one is repaid handsomely, since the turves as they are removed can be heaped up in a corner of the plot and converted into an excellent manure substitute in about six months’ time. The turves and the soil below are almost certain, however, to be infested with wire-worms and similar pests, so thorough fumigation of the former as they are stacked up and of the latter when it is being dug is essential. 1

THE VEGETABLE BEDS THE VEGETABLE BEDS NOTE.— For every vegetable there are dozens of named varieties, all of them very nearly equally excellent provided they are properly handled and given the conditions they need. Moreover, every gardener with the smallest experience has his own favourites, knowing very well which varieties he considers give the best results. Particular varieties, therefore, are not, in general, given here, and any gardener desiring information on this point should take the advice of his seed merchant. SOME vegetables are best sown where they will come to maturity; others should be sown in a seed-bed. The former include the root crops, peas, beans, lettuce, spinach and the like. The cabbage family—a term which comprises cabbages, cauliflowers, savoys, brussels sprouts, broccoli and kale—should always be sown in a special seed-bed and transplanted later when weather permits and space can be found for them in the plot allotted to them. All members of the cabbage family, with the one exception of kale, are very greedy feeders. They require a large quantity of food and this you have to supply. The plot should be deeply dug and liberally manured. If you can get stable manure, work three barrowloads into every thirty square yards; that is, twelve barrowloads into plot I, but omitting the strip to be planted with kale. You will have to feed the plants somehow or other, so if stable manure is short use well-decayed garden refuse from the compost heap. The plants will require extra nourishment, but the chemicals to use are given under the various crop headings. In every case the right amount of seed to sow is 1 / 2 oz. for each 42-ft. row, so how much you have to buy depends upon the number of rows to be planted. To save you figuring this out, the necessary quantity is given for each green crop. You can make do with slightly less, so if your rows are only 25 ft. long, 1 / 8 oz. of seed will see you through.