Country life -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Farm life -- Juvenile fiction; New York (State) -- Juvenile fiction
With the first days of the month we planted, on a part of the garden
slope, where the soil was dry and warm, very early, dwarf sweet corn, a
second early variety, Burr's Mammoth, and Stowell's Evergreen.
"These several kinds," I said, "will give us a succession of boiling
ears for weeks together. When this planting is up a few inches high, we
will make another, for, by so doing, my garden book says we may have
this delicious vegetable till frost comes."
After reading and some inquiry during the winter I had decided to buy
only McLean's Gem peas for seed. This low-growing kind required no
brush and, therefore, far less labor. By putting in a row every ten
days till the last of June, we should enjoy green peas of the sweet,
wrinkled sort till tired, if that were possible. We also planted early
dwarf wax-beans, covering the seed, as directed, only two inches deep.
It was my ambition to raise a large crop of Lima beans, having read
that few vegetables yield more food to a small area than they. So,
armed with an axe and a hatchet, Merton and I went into some young
growth on the edge of our wood lot and cut thirty poles, lopping off
the branches so as to leave little crotches on which the vines could
rest for support. Having sharpened these poles we set them firmly in
the garden, four feet apart each way, then dug in some very fine and
decayed manure around each pole, and left the soil for a day or two to
grow warm and light. My book said that, if the earth was cold, wet, or
heavy the beans would decay instead of coming up. The 10th of the month
being fine and promising, I pressed the eye or germ side of the beans
into the soil and covered them only one inch deep. In the evening we
set out our cabbage and cauliflower plants where they should be allowed
to mature. The tomato plants, being more tender than their companions
started in the kitchen window, were set about four inches apart in a
sheltered place. We could thus cover them at night and protect them a
little from the midday sun for a week or two longer.
Nor were Mousie's flowering plants forgotten. She had watched over them
from the seed with tireless care, and now we made a bed and helped the
happy child to put her little nurslings in the open ground where they
were to bloom. The apple-trees made the air fragrant, and some of the
delicate pink of their blossoms was in Mousie's cheeks.
"Truly," I thought, as I looked into her sparkling eyes, "if we can but
barely live in the country, I am glad we came."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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