Organic Gardening Web
For Organic Gardeners to Share Knowledge
Organic Vegetable Gardening
This website has used the format of the book Home Vegetable Gardening A COMPLETE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE PLANTING AND CARE OF ALL VEGETABLES, FRUITS AND BERRIES WORTH GROWING FOR HOME USE BY F. F. ROCKWELL
Please read our note on
information in this website
A note on this Title from the Organic Gardening Web:
This title is being edited for the Organic Gardening Web. In the completed version we will have removed, or commented on, the parts of the book which are not consistent with the ethics of organic gardening. Organic Gardening Web intends to maintain intellectual property rights over the changes and additions in this online edition...There are many unadulterated versions on the internet if you look. In some cases our version may not even resemble the original text. This version will remain free to the public here... but may not be reposted without the permission of the organic gardening web. Please link to it from your website.
Many old gardening books have come into public domain and contain allot of information about the old ways of gardening/farming. The "old" methods were, in many cases, organic and thus in effort to preserve this knowledge we will be collecting this information, editing and organizing it here on our website.
PREFACE
With some, organic vegetable gardening is a hobby; with others, especially in these days of high prices, a great help. There are many in both classes whose experience in organic gardening has been restricted within very narrow bounds, and whose present spare time for organic gardening is limited. This website is written as "first aid" to persons who want to do practical, efficient organic gardening, and do it with the least possible fuss and loss of time. In his own experience the author has found that garden books, while seldom lacking in information, often do not present it in the clearest possible way. It has been his aim to make the present volume first of all practical, then comprehensive, yet simple and concise. If it helps to make the way of the home organic gardener more clear and definite, its purpose will have been accomplished.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
WHY YOU SHOULD GARDEN
REQUISITES OF THE HOME VEGETABLE GARDEN
THE
PLANTING PLAN
IMPLEMENTS AND THEIR USES
MANURES AND FERTILIZERS
THE SOIL AND ITS PREPARATION
VEGETABLES
STARTING THE PLANTS
SOWING AND PLANTING
THE
CULTIVATION OF VEGETABLES
THE
VEGETABLES AND THEIR SPECIAL NEEDS
BEST
VARIETIES OF THE GARDEN VEGETABLES
INSECTS AND DISEASE, AND METHODS OF FIGHTING THEM
HARVESTING AND STORING
FRUITS
THE VARIETIES OF POME AND STONE FRUITS
PLANTING;
CULTIVATION; FILLER CROPS
PRUNING, SPRAYING, HARVESTING
BERRIES AND SMALL FRUITS
A CALENDAR OF
OPERATIONS
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER I
Formerly it was the custom for gardeners to invest their labors and achievements with a mystery and secrecy which might well have discouraged any amateur from trespassing upon such difficult ground. "Trade secrets" in either flower or vegetable growing were acquired by the apprentice only through practice and observation, and in turn jealously guarded by him until passed on to some younger brother in the profession. Every garden operation was made to seem a wonderful and difficult undertaking. Now, all that has changed. In fact the pendulum has swung, as it usually does, to the other extreme. Often, if you are a beginner, you have been flatteringly told in print that you could from the beginning do just as well as the experienced gardener.
My garden friend, it cannot, as a usual thing, be done. Of course, it may happen and sometimes does. You _might_, being a trusting lamb, go down into Wall Street with $10,000 [Ed. Note: all monetary values throughout the book are 1911 values] and make a fortune. You know that you would not be likely to; the chances are very much against you. Organic gardening is a matter of common sense; and the man, or the woman, who has learned by experience how to do something, whether it is cornering the market or growing cabbages, naturally does it better than the one who has not. Do not expect the impossible. I _have_ grown pumpkins that necessitated the tearing down of the fence in order to get them out of the lot, and sometimes, though not frequently, have had to use the axe to cut through a stalk of asparagus, but I never "made $17,000 in ten months from an eggplant in a city back-yard." No, if you are going to take up gardening, you will have to work, and you will have a great many disappointments. All that I, or anyone else, could put between the two covers of a book will not make a gardener of you. It must be learned through the fingers, and back, too. But, after all, the greatest reward for your efforts will be the work itself; and unless you love the work, or have a feeling that you will love it, probably the best way for you, is to stick to the organic grocer for your garden.
Most things, in the course of development, change from the simple to the complex. The art of organic gardening has in many ways been an exception to the rule. The methods of culture used for many crops are more simple than those in vogue a generation ago. The last fifty years has seen also a tremendous advance in the varieties of vegetables, and the strange thing is that in many instances the new and better vegetables are more easily and quickly grown than those they have replaced. The new lima beans are an instance of what is meant. While limas have always been appreciated as one of the most delicious of vegetables, in many sections they could never be successfully grown, because of their aversion to dampness and cold, and of the long season required to mature them. The newer sorts are not only larger and better, but hardier and earlier; and the bush forms have made them still more generally available. Most of these new varieties have come through the use of selective breeding to help form hybrids which carry on the positive traits of both the parent plants. This is a tedious process which includes removing the plants that did not carry on the traits. We do not have any problems using varieties made through this process. Recently though, many of the seeds made for farmers have been created in a laboratory which splices genes into the plant to get the desired result, making what is referred to as a genetically modified organism (GMO). These genetic modification were first done as experiments, then to "improve" the plants to make growing them easier (plants that make their own insecticide), and now are being done to get the plants to make drugs for humans. The genetic modifications have added genes from other species and even animals to the plant. It is our (the organic gardening web) opinion that these plants should be avoided, since the results to the crop as a food have not been confirmed as safe through a lifetime of testing. The effect that patented seeds have on the small farming community are already being seen in the courtroom where they are seldom able to afford the high price lawyers that the seed creators have. It also does not, by any stretch of the imagination, fit in with an organic ethic. I suggest that you use seed catalogues that commit to never selling GMO's.
Knowledge on the subject of gardening is also more widely diffused than ever before, and photographs (now video) has helped wonderfully in telling the newcomer how to do things. It has also lent an impetus and furnished an inspiration which words alone could never have done. If one were to attempt to read all the gardening instructions and suggestions being published, he would have no time left to practice gardening at all. Why then, the reader may ask at this point, another garden book? It is a pertinent question, and it is right that an answer be expected in advance. The reason, then, is this: while there are garden books in plenty, most of them pay more attention to the "content" than to the form in which it is laid before the prospective gardener. The material is often presented as an accumulation of detail, instead of by a systematic and constructive plan which will take the reader step by step through the work to be done, and make clear constantly both the principles and the practice of garden making and management, and at the same time avoid every digression unnecessary from the practical point of view. Other books again, are either so elementary as to be of little use where gardening is done without gloves, or too elaborate, however accurate and worthy in other respects, for an every-day working manual. The author feels, therefore, that there is a distinct field for the present book.
And, while I still have the reader by the "introduction" buttonhole, I want to make a suggestion or two about using a book (webpage) like this. Do not, on the one hand, read it through and then put it away with the dictionary and the family Bible, and trust to memory for the instruction it may give; do not, on the other hand, wait until you think it is time to plant something, and then go and look it up. For instance, do not, about the middle of May, begin investigating how many onion seeds to put in a hill; you will find out that they should have been put in, in drills, six weeks before. Read the whole book through carefully at your first opportunity, make a list of the things you should do for your own vegetable garden, and put opposite them the proper dates for your own vicinity. Keep this available, as a working guide, and refer to special matters as you get to them.
Do not feel discouraged that you cannot be promised immediate success at the start. I know from personal experience and from the experience of others that "book-gardening" is a practical thing. If you do your work carefully and thoroughly, you may be confident that a very great measure of success will reward the efforts of your first garden season.
And I know too, that you will find it the most entrancing game you ever played.
Good luck to you!