Make Your Garden Feed You

Make Your Garden Feed You
E. T. Brown

Looking for a purchase that combines your horticultural bent with your desire to save money? This brilliantly titled book does exactly what it says on the tin.Time travel back to the forties with this unique facsimile of a genuine archive title. Let horticultural expert E.T. Brown teach you how to get the most out of your garden, and slash your shopping budget at the same time.In this specially restored and reproduced book, you will learn:o How to grow berries and tomatoeso How to prepare an herb bedo The best way to keep birds and mice from your peas, and other enemies of your flower bedo How to utilise bees to get not only honey, but also fine fruito What to think about when sourcing manure from poultry and rabbitsUniform with this volume: Sew and Save o Food facts for the Kitchen Front o The Archive Collection - because good advice never goes out of date.

Make Your Garden Feed You

E. T. Brown

A concise, practical book on gardening, poultry, rabbit-breeding, and bee-keeping in war-time conditions.

Clearly illustrated in black and white.

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u65d74da9-0d3e-509f-929b-64f8fe91c2e4)

Title Page (#u73727e98-07fe-58b1-80fa-a848c93878b7)

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK (#ub9bbd853-16c1-5d94-8156-a1a621ab83a3)

TO PLAN YOUR CROPS (#u5f68e19f-47f1-5e1b-b005-d6ddb3a471a7)

TOOLS TO MAKE OR BUY (#u15037321-4e45-593f-b5be-902c39626a74)

SPADE-WORK AND SOWING (#u8c111587-29a6-517a-ab77-bd9dd1f589c6)

THE VEGETABLE BEDS (#u4a7f6933-6b65-527f-af08-a60df1b21074)

FRUIT TREES AND TOMATOES (#litres_trial_promo)

FLOWERS TO GROW IN WAR-TIME (#litres_trial_promo)

YOUR GARDEN FRIENDS AND FOES (#litres_trial_promo)

YOUR JOB MONTH BY MONTH (#litres_trial_promo)

POULTRY-KEEPING IN WAR-TIME (#litres_trial_promo)

RABBITS FOR FLESH AND FUR (#litres_trial_promo)

BEES TO GIVE HONEY AND FINE FRUIT (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK (#ulink_eabda1f8-845e-5dee-bb13-9e6dadd34681)

Many are the difficulties that beset the person equipped for the first time with a spade, a packet of seeds, and a plot of soil. “How deep must I plant them?” “Do they need watering?” “What will they look like when they come up?” These are only a few of the questions that dismay the novice.

The experienced gardener in war-time is in little better position. He knows the way he has always gone about his tasks, he knows when to put his seeds in and what to do with the seedlings when they appear. But now he ought to ask himself: “ Is my garden yielding as much per square foot as it should do ? ” “ Am I getting the best possible results in the shortest time or could I perhaps do better if I changed my methods ? ” In addition, he has two very big problems—what to use for manures now that many kinds are unobtainable, and how to curtail waste which was previously unimportant but now is criminal.

Answers to all these questions could be discovered eventually by experiment—the process of trial and error. But at a time of national emergency there is neither leisure nor material for this method. The necessary information has to be acquired quickly and with the minimum of effort. Make Your Garden Feed You has been written to meet this need.

The book is severely practical. The author takes a plot of ground—90 feet by 60 feet—and shows exactly how it must be arranged and treated to make it yield the maximum amount of food for the minimum expenditure of money and labour. He explains why it is economical to keep fowls, rabbits, and bees, in addition to growing vegetables and fruit, and he gives sound advice on how to overcome the war-time difficulties of manuring the ground and feeding the livestock.

The best way to use this book is to read it straight through as far as the end of the section on vegetable growing, and to spend half an hour or so absorbing the details of the plan shown on pages 2 and 3. The next step is to adapt the author’s arrangement to suit your own garden or allotment. You may have to leave out the fruit trees or decide bee-keeping is unsuitable in your neighbourhood. But the main features of the scheme—especially the inclusion of three vegetable plots—can be kept for any garden, whatever its size or special peculiarities. If you only have room for one or two rows of vegetables you can plan to grow different crops from one year to the next.

CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT FROM THE CONTENTS LIST

When you have fixed the layout for your own garden and have the preliminary details worked out, then look at the contents list on page v. This shows the range of subjects covered by the book and all you need to do is to turn to the page where your special problems are solved. How deep to dig the ground, how much seed to buy, when to put it in, when and how to transplant the seedlings—the answers to all such questions can be found immediately. Some difficulties, however, are not easy to clear up in words; the distinction, for example, between a useful plant and a dangerous weed requires an object lesson rather than an explanation. These obstacles, therefore, are removed by a number of very clear illustrations which will be of use and interest to beginner and veteran alike.

TO PLAN YOUR CROPS (#ulink_eb7e9140-0886-55f5-aebd-b4a1a50c5984)

WHATEVER the shape and size of your allotment or garden, you are advised to decide where everything you intend to grow is to be planted before you start. Similarly the sites of the shed, greenhouse, manure heap, etc., should all be chosen at the outset.

The diagram given here (Fig. 1) shows the layout recommended for a plot measuring 90 ft. by 60 ft. If your allotment or garden plot is smaller you should not have much difficulty in adapting the layout to suit your individual need. For instance, if your plot measures go ft. by 45 ft. and you propose to go in for all the four departments of food production, all it means is that the three vegetable plots will be 27 ft. by 28 ft. instead of 42 ft. by 28 ft.

IF THERE IS NO FENCE

It is to be hoped that the 90-ft. long north boundary consists of a solid fence, since this simplifies things considerably; but if it happens to be a wire-strand fence, or even no fence at all, this little difficulty can be overcome easily enough and without the outlay of a lot of money.

Should there be no fencing, run three strands of stout wire from the greenhouse and a post in one corner to the corner of the general-purpose shed, and again from the east corner of the shed to the corner of the poultry house, covering this with 1-in. mesh, 4-ft. high wire-netting. Support by means of 3-in. square stakes placed about 5 ft. apart.

PLACING THE FRUIT TREES AND TOMATOES

Leaf-mould is invaluable, particularly in these days when stable manure is so difficult to obtain, so provision has to be made for its storage. And the same is true of the compost heap. These 6 ft. by 5 ft. areas can be fronted by 5-ft. high trellis with a bed in front for planting soft fruit climbers.

At the back of the seed-bed and between the frames and the north boundary cordon, fruit trees or tomatoes may be grown if the wall is solid. If the fence is only of wire strands, tomatoes are ruled out, because they would not be sufficiently sheltered.

It is suggested that espalier fruit trees should be planted at the north end of plots 1 and 2, and that a herb bed, 4 ft. in width, should be sown or planted at the far end of plot 3, while to accommodate a greater number of soft fruit bushes 8 ft. or 10 ft. long pergolas—a string of connected arches—should be erected at each end of the two main paths. The bee-hives can be placed conveniently close to the fruit trees of the centre plot, where the bees will help to fertilize them.

WHY THREE VEGETABLE PLOTS ARE ESSENTIAL

Whatever else you may not do, you should divide the area to be used for growing vegetables into three separate plots. It does not matter whether these are separated by a path, as shown in the diagram, or not, but you should mark their confines in one way or another.

Much of the success that will attend your efforts depends upon planning your crops in three groups. Here are the reasons:

1. No crop should be taken off the same plot two years in succession.

2. Some crops are shallow-rooting and only take plant food from the surface, while others are deep-rooting and obtain their food from the lower soil. By arranging for a deep-rooting crop to follow a shallow-rooting one, and vice versa, you are saved spending a lot of extra money on manure or chemical fertilisers.

3. Some plants require a large quantity of one kind of plant food, but others need little of it. Again, manure is saved by growing one such crop after the other.

The three plots are marked : Plot 1, Green Crops; Plot 2, Peas, etc.; and Plot 3, Root Crops. The second year the crops are shifted round, so that Plot 1 carries the roots, Plot 2 the greens and Plot 3 the peas, etc. The next year they are moved a step again, and so on. Each crop comes back to its original site every third year.

VEGETABLES YOU ARE ADVISED TO GROW

Various points have been taken into consideration in the choice of vegetables to be grown, and the amount of space which is devoted to each—easy cultivation, high food value, health-promoting qualities, and a regular supply of vegetables in season without a surplus of any. In connection with the last point it must be remembered that the requirements of the rabbits and poultry have to be taken into account.