Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1895 — Back Yards Are Wasted. [ARTICLE]

Back Yards Are Wasted.

An old gardener told the Cincinnati Times-Star reporter that the most wonderful thing about city folks is their ignorance of what they could do with the little strips of ground surrounding their houses and especially with their back yards, “They are not big enough for lawns,’’said he. “so most people just use them to walk on, but if they had some gumption they could enjoy many a garden delicacy of their own raising. A strip twenty feet long and a foot wide against the wall would furnish enough grapes for two people to eat. The next foot would supply them with peas; the next with beans; the next with radishes and turnips and lettuce; one bush in each of the four corners would produce plenty of gooseberries; another foot in width would supply all the strawberries; another foot raspberries; another blackberries; another a month’s supply of potatoes; another with several fine messes of corn, and so on. There are ten feet planted, but give what I have named twenty feet, as almost anv city backyard could do, and they would grow wonderfully. A back yard twenty by twenty would raise plenty of small truck for two people, yet how many back yards are wasted 1”