Evening star., 1925-09-20
Views on Deadly Modern Sports Dreams and Gardening
Springtime's Grirnly-Determined Men
Show New Traits as Garden Time Ends

a cabbage two-thirds grown without
going out and tearing 1t off the stem
Even at that II Ia not bad plan
to eat the stuff while you can. The
most peculiar thing about gardening
Is that all of a sudden everything 10
too old to eat. Radishes change over
night from delicate young shoots not
large enough to put on the table into
huge plants with a root like an Irish
shillaleh. II you take your eyes off a
lettuce bed for week the lettuces.
not ready TO eat when you last looked
at them. have changed into a jungle
of hollyhocks.
Green peas are only really green for
about two hours. Before that they
are young peas; after that they are
| old peas. Cucumbers are the worst
case of ALL They change over night
| from delicate little bulbs obviously too
slight and dainty to pick. to old suit
| cases Of yellow leather filled with
seeds.
II l were ever to garden again, q.
| thing which Is out of the bounds of
| possibility. I should wait until a GER
| tain day and hour when all the plants
were ripe, and then go out with a gun
and shoot them all dead, so that they
| could grow no more.
! But calculation, I repeat, Ia the
bane OF gardening. ] knew among
our group OF food producers, a party
| of young engineers, college men, who
| took an empty farm north OF the
| city as the scene Of their Summer
| operations. They took their coats off
| and applied college methods. They
| ran out, first, base line Alb, and
measured off from it lateral spurs
! MN, OP. OR. and so on. From these
! they took side angles with a theodolits
so as TO get the edges OF each of the
separate plots of their land absolutely
correct.
These young men made blueprint
OF the whole thing as they planted it..
The yield was calculated to A nicety
They had allowed for the fact that
some of the stuff might fail TO grow
by introducing what they called "a
soefficient of error
BY means of this and by reducing
the variation of Autumn prices to a.
mathematical curve. those men not
only knew already in the middle OF
May the exact yield of their farm to
within half a bushel Ghev allowed,
they said, a variation of half a bushel
per so acres). but they knew before
hand within a few cents the market
value that they would receive.
The figures. as I remember them,
were simply amazing. 1t seemed in.
credible that so acres could produce
so much. Yet there were the plain
facts In front of one, calculated out.
The thing amounted practically to a
revolution in farming. And 1t would
have If those young men had come
back again to hoe their field.
Not only was IL to be an experiment {
in food production, 1t was also a new
departure in social cooperation. The
frst Saturday that those young men
worked there were, so l have been
told IS OF them driving in white
stakes and running lines. The next
Saturday there were Is of them plant
ing potatoes. The rest We're busy
; The week after that there was one
man pulling weeds. After that silence
fell upon the deserted garden. broken
only by the cry of the chick dee and
the choo-choo feeding on the waving
, heads of the thistles.
tCopyright 1881