Six Good Garden Rules

Also let rich land and plenty of natural organic fertilizer (really abundant fertilizer) give you more vegetables with less work than poorer land or less fertilizer would provide.

Let's use to the fullest any vegetables (like asparagus) that we can plant once in a lifetime, and okra which keeps bearing right on till frost. Finally, let's fight grass and insects with chemicals as far as practicable.

2. Get the man of the house to do more garden work. When I was growing up, some man said this is the secret of successful gardening? "Never plant more than your wife can cultivate!" Nowadays, however, wives are smarter. They not only get the man to help in cultivating the good garden, but have come to insist in this practice.

3. Grow an abundance of vegetables to make the family healthy. Now we know we can't be healthy without them. Fresh vegetables well cooked certainly taste better than a doctor's prescription and cost less. Simply as an example of a good garden, here are 18 such vegetables.

a) For vitamins A and C: leafy and yellow vegetables such as turnip an mustard greens, collards, kale, broccoli, spinach, cantaloupes.

b) For more vitamin A: sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, winter-type squash, Swiss chard.

c) For more vitamin C: tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi.

Of course many other vegetables must be added. Especially the importance of collards. For health and vitamins the collard is an aristocrat of the south and a key element of a good garden.

Let's not forget canning and freezing for off-season or year round use. Let's not make this a matter of merely preserving "surplus" produce but let's plan and plant the garden to provide enough for this purpose. Modern day methods of food preservation can give your family year round freshness even when you cannot get fresh vegetables directly from your garden.

No meal is complete with the right herbs and spices. When planning your garden don't forget to include an area for this purpose. You might want to consider a patio or indoor herb gardens in order to have easy access to fresh cooking herbs. 4. Think of growing a good garden as an adventure by constantly trying on new vegetables, new varieties, new methods of cooking. "Get acquainted wit your neighbor, you might like him," is a slogan in some towns and the same thing is true of vegetables.

At first I cordially disliked okra; now it is a constant favorite. Especially important are new and different ways of cooking and serving vegetables to catch everybody's taste. Families generally do not regularly serve a raw vegetable such as carrots, lettuce, and celery every day.

5. Have the garden near the house. The nearer it is, the fewer steps one has to take. Make the garden so pretty you won't mind having it near the house. So attractively laid off, so neatly kept, bordered with flowers, shrubbery, or hedge that it will be no less pretty than your lawn.

6. Get the kids interested. In addition to growing vegetables for the whole family, let's have plenty of watermelons and cantaloupes for the kids (as well as older ones).

It helps to have melon to share with friends and neighbors every time they drop in all summer long! It used to be the rule to have a watermelon and cantaloupe "patch" separate from the garden. But there are many advantages in growing them as a part of the garden itself, also a row or two of peanuts and popcorn for the youngsters.