Around the Year in the Garden Author:Frederick Frye Rockwell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: February: First Week MAKE A PLAN NOW—AND FOLLOW IT THIS SUMMER No single factor in garden management makes for greater saving of time and work than a caref... more »ully-thought-out, definite-to-the-foot garden plan. Such a one should be prepared long before outdoor operations begin. Perhaps it will take several hours' thoughtful and careful work to make it, especially if you have never made one before, but every hour spent now will save several hours in the garden later on. The plan should show your actual garden, drawn to scale, as you mean to make it; it should show just how much space you intend to use for each crop, where you intend to sow second crops, and, if you want to do really intensive gardening, where you will grow companion crops. It will help you not only with this year's gardening but with next year's as well; without it you will be only guessing at your crop rotations. First get the exact dimensions of the plot or plots of ground that you expect to devote to gardening; then draw an outline to scale. One-eighth of an inch to a foot for a medium-sized garden, or one-quarter of an inch to a foot for a small garden, will be found a convenient scale. When it is possible to choose the garden site a rectangular plot that can be plowed and harrowed the long way and planted the short way will be found best. If the garden is large and square it will generally be a good plan to divide it by a permanent path; rows fifty feet long are ample for the average garden. The aim should always be to keep the rows short enough, in proportion to the size of the garden, so the row will be a planting unit. Always figure your plantings in rows—not in seed quantities. Next, on another piece of paper, write a list of the various vegetables that you plan to have, and decide how much space t...« less