Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1917 — THE HOME GARDEN [ARTICLE]

THE HOME GARDEN

This year promises to witness a greatly increased interest in the city home garden, for not only has gardening taken a prominent and well deserved place in the curriculum of the public schools, thus, through school children, spreading among the entire city population

the, fundamental rules about intensive cultivation, but the high price of vegetables during the winter has whetted the public appetite to such an extent that many will turn to their back for fresh vegetables at modest prices. The area of wasted ground in a city the size of Indianapolis is, to the foreign obseryer who is accustomed to seeing evtery foot of ground utilized, really appalling; And most of it is wasted because most of the people are not acquainted with its value. There are few persons in the city who can not devote at least an hour a day to a small home garden. Many, of course, find more pleasure in sports, devoting such time as they can spare frojn their work to more or less strenuous exercise. Some are of the opinion that it is

■waste of time to cultivate a small tract of ground, a few hundred square feet. They do not realize that by careful planting, frequent watering and methodical cultivation, a great deal more can be raised in a city back yard than the farmer would attempt to raise in the same area. He has not the facilities for watering his farm, and he must have room to cultivate with horses. The country has not grown to a point where intensive cultivation in rural districts, as it is practiced in Belgium, for instance, is profitable. But it is profitable in the city. The expense is another reason why many persons hesitate to start a garden. They believe —and not without reason—that the soil is poor and will have to be treated before it is fit for intensive gardening. Hundreds of lots in the city have been filled with inferior soil, but if weeds and grass will grow upon it, vegetables can, by the application of fertilizer, be made to grow, also. And the expense of this treatment is not much. In fact, by the expenditure of $3 to $£ for fertilizer and seed, the average back yard can be made to produce enough vegetables to feed the average family during a large part of the summer. It can not be done, however, without a considerable amount of work. This brings in another phase of the question, for the work is really among the most healthful forms of exercise, “worth more to the man who spends his days at a desk or counter or bench than the garden. If this is considered the expense becomes a negligible consideration,, and if the ground and time are available, there is no excuse left. —Indianapolis News.