The Portland daily press., 1878-01-09
FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.
Farmers Gardens.

Many farmers mistakenly suppose that the
products of the garden are luxuries which
they cannot afford to enjoy, or to supply to
their families. They do not seem to be aware
that fruits and vegetables are more profitable
in feeding their households than anything
else they can raise. They save the purchas
of many things at the grocer's. They lessen
the necessity Of so heavy supply of costly
meats. They diminish the cons umption of
that expensive material, butter. With some
the whole catalogue of garden vegetables con
sists of potatoes and cabbages. Sometimes
they add few turnips, and more rarely pars-
nips for only few weeks, for, not taking
proper care of them, they soon wilt and dry,
and become of little value. They might as
well have asparagus in early spring, spinach,
radishes. vegetable oysters, parsnips, beets OF
two or three sorts, early and late, celery, eau
lifower, broccoli, Savoy as well drumhead
cabbage, summer and winter squashes, and
many other vegetables, most of them as easy
10 growth as the few on the limited catalogue
which they now have. They may add the
or three quarts Of delicious strawberries on
their tables daily for several weeks during
the early part Of summer, followed with an
equal supply OF raspberries afterwards. Their
meagre crop of currants might be changed to
abundance and large size by care and Guilt
walton. Grapes, one OF the most wholesome
of all fruits, may be had through the entire
months of autumn and half of winter, enough
for any common family from quarter-acre
vineyard.
Some are deferred from the necessary care
and labor for securing these economical luxu
ries by the erroneous supposition that they
require great labor and much cost. They
judge from the fact that their own gardens
have been allowed 10 run to weeds, which
have either been pulled out with much finger
labor or else these weeds have remained and
and have cheked the crop. If most of the
space occupied with the fruits and vegetables
were planted in rows, so as to cultivated by
means of horse, this would not cost more
than equal areas in their corn and potato
fields. If they made it rule to pass the
cultivator often enough to prevent the weeds
from ever reaching the surface of the sol
the expense would be even less than that of
some farm crops as too often laboriously
managed.
There is one other requisite in connection
with well kept garden, essential to good
winter supply, and that is the cellar. The
garden originates and grows the luxuries, the
cellar receives and preserves them. This
apartment should therefore receive special at
tention. Most important of all, it should be
kept perfectly clean, without the slightest
vestige of decaying matter, mouldiness or bad
odor. 1t must be secure against frost. A
proper degree of constant ventilation must be
given. Then, when the crops from the gar
den are placed in it, they should be in con-
dition to keep well. Never indulge in the
slovenly practice of placing them in heaps on
the cellar bottom. They should be packed in
neat boxes, bins or barrels. Those roots
which wilt and shrivel need special packing
In damp moss or sawdust. The brown moss
NV ~,
trees and plants, is excellent; but where they
cannot be had, the green moss from the
woods, broken up and pulverized, answers
nearly as well. Damp Bawdust will do In
moderate sized boxes; in large ones there is
danger of its heating. Beets, parsnips and
turnips, to keep plump and fresh, will require
such packing. We have taken beets from the
box where they had been thus placed twelve
months before. when bringing in the fresh
beets late in autumn from the garden, and
the two could not be distinguished by the ex-
ternal appearance.
1t is much easier to keep cellar in good
and clearly order, and everything neat and in
place, than to allow the accumulation of de-
caying matter, and afterwards to be COM
PEELED to clean it all out, with the danger of
disease from bad air superadded.
There is one important advantage in a free
and regular supply of ripe fruit from the gar
den, that Is too often quite overlooked-its
beneficial effect in preserving health. We
have known families moving into new coun-
tries, to keep perfectly we'll so long as their
supply of even dried fruit lasted them, but af-
forwards to be much afflicted with sickness
when 1t was gone. We have known families
In new countries, who took pains to secure an
early and regular supply of small fruits and
plenty of vegetables, to maintain continued
good health, while their neighbors, without
such precaution, were more or less troubled
with malarial diseases. There is no question
that men have sometimes paid more for doc
tors bills, to say nothing of other loss from
sickness, than would have been sufficient to
cultivate good garden, and this not merely
in new countries, but In those long settled
Country Gentleman.