Q. How do you plant on the side of a hill?

A. Very carefully, or your garden will wash away. We call it contour planting: the rows follow the curve around the hill, not up and down the slope. Mountain gardens should have about a 5-degree slope to the southeast.

Q. lf you have a good spot to grow a garden, but it’s very small and you want flowers as well as vegetables and berries, can you plant them all together without altering the flavor of food or fragrance of flowers?

A. Absolutely; I never give it a thought. I use salad greens, spinach, mustard, lettuce, and red cabbage as borders in front of evergreens while growing pole beans up my downspouts near my roses, and I mix carrots and parsnips with marigolds as sidewalk borders.

Q. Do strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries need a different soil and location from my regular garden? Can they really be grown with each other?

 

A. They aren’t any different from any other member of the garden team; they can and should be grown together.

Q. How do you figure how much space you need for a vegetable garden for the size family you have?

A. The way my Grandma Putt taught me was to add together the heights of each of my family members—rounded off, in feet—then square that number, and that’s the number of square feet you need for your home garden. That’s the garden space I would need to cultivate to provide food for my family for one year, whether that food is fresh, frozen, stored, or dried.

Q. How many rows or how many plants of each vegetable should you plant?

A. You always plant more of the things you like than the things you don’t; that stands to reason. But here’s a formula I use as an all-around rule. Row crops—carrots, radishes, parsnips—are planted in a row whose length equals your height, or a six-foot row for sons over thirteen years of age and for fathers; one-half that length for mothers and daughters over fifteen; a third that length for any children under fifteen. There should be three tomato and pepper plants for dad and one each for each other family member.

Q. Do you really have to draw a picture of your garden?

A. No, you don’t have to, but it sure does make it easier to remember where you had what this year when you want to know that information three years from now when you’re rotating your crops. I use a large paper grocery bag. I cut the bag, and draw in the crops in color. Then I write notes on the bag all season: it becomes my garden diary.

Q. Are seeds you send away for as good as the ones you buy in the seed racks in your grocery store?

A. Yes. Whoever started the rumor that they aren’t should have his mouth washed out with soap. Use both sources. The mail-order seed men often have a larger and newer selection than you’ll find on the racks because there may not be a large enough quantity for the packet-seed market yet. There are lots of small, specialized mail-order seed houses that never send seeds to a general market. If you want the unusual or the unique, you’re more likely to find it in a catalog than a hardware store.

Q. I have some two-year-old seed. Is it still good?

A. Test it by sprinkling five or six seeds on top of a pot of damp soil. Cover the soil and see if they germinate. If they do, it is; if they don’t, it’s not. Better to test it now than wait three or four weeks to see if it comes up in your garden—only to find out you lost time and space.

Q. Which seeds go in early and how early?

A. The vegetable and fruit plants I call tough are asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, celery, collards, garlic, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, onion sets and all other onions, peas, radishes, rhubarb, rutabaga, spinach, strawberries, and turnips. When I say early I mean these can go in from a month to two weeks before the last frost in your area.

Q. Is it true that the best time to plant corn is on Memorial Day?

A. That’s as good a guide date as any for snow country planting. You can also add artichokes, beans, cantaloupe, eggplant, okra, peanuts, peppers, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, and watermelon on that date for snow country.

Q. How early can you plant the lettuces?

A. I generally gamble and plant lettuce as well as beets, carrots, cauliflower, endive, parsley, parsnips, potatoes, and Swiss chard about a week before the last frost date. Then I hold my breath.

Q. How deep do you plant corn? The birds always seem to get mine.

A. All the large seeds are planted two inches deep. Beans and onion sets should be two inches deep as well. Beets, cucumbers, melons, peas, and squash are planted at one inch deep; broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, eggplant, lettuce, mustard, parsnips, peppers, radishes, spinach, and turnips are happy with a half-inch soil blanket; tomatoes only want a quarter inch

Q. ls it true that you should always plant cucumbers on the east side of a garden?

A. As far as I know, it’s true, but I carry it a step further. All vine crops—cantaloupe and watermelon, not to, mention squash—are planted at the east end of my garden because these plants always grow toward the east and will run over the top of other plants.

Q. Do you really have to plant so many kernels of corn to the mound in order to get corn?

A. Yep! According to my teachers, all old experts, you must plant four seeds to the mound. If you’re planting in rows, plant seed nine to twelve inches apart and two feet between the rows with at least three rows. And always plant on the west side of your garden so the corn can protect the other plants from warm, dry winds.

Q. How often should you feed corn?

A. Never use garden food with newly planted seed or it will rot. I feed corn the first time when it’s a foot high with any lawn food and again when its beard or silk shows.

Q. What good does soaking corn seed do?

A. Improves the odds on its rowing in your favor. I soak all vegetable seed in a cup of tea in the refrigerator for twenty-four hours before I plant. The results are worth the effort and extra time.

Q. Corn takes up so darn much space for so long a time with little return. Can I grow something along with it?

A. Sure you can, but be kind to both groups. I interplant pole beans. The beans grow up the stalks and don’t hurt a thing.

Q. If farmers grow pumpkins in cornfields, why can’t l?

A. There’s no reason on earth why you can’t, but how many pumpkins can you use? I’ve found thatcorn and cucumbers become great friends. You see, lots of folks don’t know it but corn likes its feet in the shade and its top in the sun. So my cucumbers, melons, and squash can be a growing mulch for my corn. That may seem contrary to what I said earlier about planting vines only at the east, but it’s not. I said the vines would grow over the other small plants, but corn is not one of them.

Q. How often should you cultivate corn?

A. Are you kidding? Me? Cultivate corn? That’s too much trouble, my friend. Eight or nine inches of straw or grass clippings down the rows and through the plants does all the cultivating needed.

Q. I just can’t seem to get beans to grow for me because I have such heavy soil. What can I do?

A. First, break up the clay as directed on page 298. Next, dig a trench ten inches deep and five inches wide and fill it with an equal mixture of sharp sand and peat moss: that will give the beans a good start. Next, drive metal stakes six feet tall into the ground and stretch wires between them at the top and the bottom. Every place you plant a seed, fix an upright wire for pole beans. I grow bush beans by using a large fruit juice can with top and bottom cut out; I push the can into the soil about two or three inches, and the beans grow up through the can.

Q. What do you feed beans?

A. Garden food in the early spring. Beans give more nitrogen back to the earth than they eat.