The garden yard

There is a good deal of talk these days about re-soiling, but the word is misleading. We cannot re-soil this earth or any part of it. The soil is there for keeps. It was here before us, and will remain after we are gone. All we can do is to put back into the soil some of the vegetable matter of which we have robbed it; and this is really what we have in mind when we speak of re-soiling. People have the habit of coining almost meaningless words, and then wondering why everybody does not know at once what they meant to say.

What we are after is, to put humus, which is really decayed vegetable matter, back into the soil. Then that natural fertility, of which we have been talking, will have a chance to get to work.

Now, decayed vegetable matter is part of what makes up stable and barnyard manure, street and stable sweepings; but, in practice, this does not afford enough humus: that is one reason why crops of clover, cowpeas, velvet-bean, buckwheat, etc., are often grown only to be plowed into the ground in the fall. These are the green manures which decay and become a part of the soil before the next planting season. Soil fertilized in this way will be richer, moister, darker, than soil fertilized solely by stable manure or commercial fertilizer. Soils that contain enough plant food to supply crops for a thousand years to come, are often barren or yield but a niggardly crop. This may be because they lack humus, which is the key that unlocks the store of plant food in the soil, and makes it available for the seeds and tender rootlets. How much more humus may do, we do not yet know, but every year fresh discoveries are made, and if we are to be benefited by them, we must get ourselves ready for the new truths by using those already known.

On his famous farm in Birmingham, Pa., “Bob” Seeds plows his cowhorn turnips, tops and all, into the earth in the fall, and by spring they have decayed. He says wherever a turnip has rotted, you can see the difference in the color of the soil even some distance away, and the abundance of the next season’s crop shows how quickly Nature responds when we work with her.

All vines and garden waste may be used for humus if plowed into the ground in the fall, unless they have been infested with insects or troubled by diseases. It is well established, that insects and their eggs manage to live over the winter by the aid of vines and refuse left lying about, as well as by weeds that the careless farmer has failed to destroy. It is well to cut all weeds, not only those that bother you in your garden, but also those that grow along the road, as often their seeds are carried by the wind or the birds into your garden patch. Gather them into a heap and burn them, adding to your bonfire all the sickly, dead, diseased, or insect-ridden vines and plants, and completely destroy them. You may be sure that the bugs on those particular plants will not bother you next year. What you lose in possible humus by this practice, you can make up by growing green manure, or even by buying some of the prepared humus materials now on the market.

The Long Island Agronomist, in a recent issue, tells of one of these materials which comes from New Jersey, and consists of innumerable rootlets, leaf-fibres and vegetable matter of all descriptions. It is gathered from the peatbogs of New Jersey and is really the wash from mountains and hills carried down by streams in freshet times, until some level was reached where this deposit was made. When spread on the land or mixed with the earth, it is found to hold much moisture, for each particle swells up as if it were a sponge, and the crops planted on soil treated with this preparation do remarkably well. It was so very expensive at first as to be almost prohibitive except for very valuable crops, but the price is now such that many a man can afford to use it, especially if he cannot afford the time or space to grow his own green manure.

Nothing looks nicer about a house than a green lawn, with smooth-cropped, velvety surface, but nothing is harder to maintain after a few years of cropping. This is because a well-kept lawn is carefully raked after each clipping, and is kept free from falling leaves or other vegetable waste matter. It must be admitted that the general effect is better, particularly when the lawn stretches from the front of the house to the roadside. But the lawn is, nevertheless, being starved, and though watered every day it cannot keep up its velvety surface indefinitely, unless supplied with the food it needs. This is Nature’s own secret for replenishing the earth with good crops, and all you need do is to observe what is going on around you, to find daily proof of it.

To quote Mr. Seeds again: “Every two years, we ought to sow clean blue grass or lawn grass seed over the lawn. I prefer to mow often and leave the clippings on the lawn. It is the blanket and vegetable matter that will do the lawn good. Every few years I cover the lawn with barnyard manure, in the fall; let it lie there all winter and that which we rake off in the spring we put on the garden. This is a little trouble, but I want to say that I made more money creating my lawn than I ever did in taking a fat ox from the stall, or a bushel of potatoes from my cellar.

“A man will stand on the public road in front of my place, and give me more for my property on account of my lawn; but money is not the only thing in the world. The lawn makes the boys and girls want to stay on the farm. It is on our lawn that we spend our spare moments on Sundays, entertaining our friends, in the summer; and there, beneath the shade of ‘the old apple-tree,’ the smoke curls more beautifully from my chimney than from any other I ever saw.”

So there is no reason why you should not have a good lawn, as well as a good garden, if you will supply what the grass roots want. And it is true that the lawn is a genuine asset. The man who is too busy to bother with making a lawn, or to sit on it with his family in spare moments, even though it takes a good deal of contriving to spare those moments, is the man who, by and by, is going to complain that his boys and girls have left the old place, and that “farming is mighty expensive with all hired help.” Unless you have made yourself and your family happy, you will not have achieved success, no matter how much wealth you may get. Give your crops and your children what they need for their best development, and you will find nothing to complain of either in parenthood or in farming.