Daddy Takes Us to the Garden Part 12

"Yes, and then I'll come and help you clear your plants of the pests,"

said Mr. Porter. "We want to have our gardens good this year, so we won't have to spend so many of our pennies for food next Winter."

A few more of the green worms were found on the tomato vines, and there were more on Daddy Blake's. So many were found that he could not be sure he had knocked them all off.

"I think I will have to spray the plants with Paris Green as I did the potatoes," he said. "The tomatoes will not be ready to pick--even the earliest--for some weeks and by that time the poison will have been washed off by the rain."

"Making a garden is lots of work" said Hal, next day, when he and Mab had helped their father spray the tomato plants.

"Yes, indeed," agreed Mr. Blake. "But, like everything else in this world, you can't have anything without working for it."

"I thought all you had to do in a garden," said Mab, "was to plant the seed and it would grow into cabbage, radishes, corn, beans or whatever you wanted."

"You are beginning to learn otherwise," spoke her father, "and it is a good thing. Mother Nature is wise and good, but she does not make it too easy for us. She will grow beautiful flowers, and useful fruits and vegetables from tiny seeds, but she also grows bad weeds and sends eating-bugs that we must fight against, if we want things to grow on our farms and gardens. So we still have much work before us to make our gardens a success."

"We haven't had much to eat from them yet," said Mother Blake, who had been hoeing among her carrots. "I hope we can pick something soon."

"We had radishes," said Hal.

"And well soon have tomatoes," added his father. "Now that I have driven away the eating worms the vines will grow better and the tomatoes will ripen faster."

A week later on some of the vines there were quite large green tomatoes.

Hal and Mab watched them eagerly, noting how they grew and swelled larger, until, one day, Mab came running in, crying:

"Oh, one tomato has a red cheek!"

"That's where it got sunburned," said her father with a smile. "That shows they are getting ripe. Soon we will have some for the table."

In a few days more tomatoes on the vines had red, rosy cheeks, some being red all over. These Daddy Blake let Hal and Mab pick, and they brought them in the house.

"Oh, we shall have some of our own tomatoes for lunch!" cried Mother Blake when she saw them. "How fine! Our garden is beginning to give us back something to pay us for all the work we put on it."

"But these are Daddy's tomatoes," said Hal. "He had the first thing, after the radishes, for the table from his garden, and Mab and I haven't anything. Daddy'll get his own prize."

"No, I promise you I will not take the prize for these tomatoes, even if I did raise them in my part of the garden," said Daddy Blake with a smile.

"And I won't count the radishes we had before the tomatoes were ripe, either. Those belonged to all of us.

"The prize isn't going to be given away until all the crops are harvested, or brought in, and then we'll see who has the most and the best of things that will keep over Winter."

"Can you keep tomatoes all Winter?" asked Mab of her father.

"Well, no, not exactly. But Mother can put them into cans, after they have been cooked, and she can make ketchup and spices of them--chili sauce and the like--as well as pickles, so, after all, you might say my tomatoes will last all Winter.

"Sometimes you can keep tomatoes fresh for quite a while down in a cool, dry cellar, if you pull the vines up by the roots, with the tomatoes still on them, and cover the roots with dirt. But they will not keep quite all Winter, I believe. At any rate I'm not going to keep ours that way. We'll can them."

Mother Blake sliced the garden tomatoes for supper. She also made a dressing for them, with oil, vinegar and spices, though Hal and Mab liked their tomatoes best with just salt on.

"Tomatoes are not only good to eat--I mean they taste good--but they are healthful for one," said Daddy Blake. "It is not so many years ago that no one ate tomatoes. They feared they were poison, and in some parts of the country they were called Ladies' or Love Apples. But now many, many thousands of cans of tomatoes are put up every year, so that we may have them in Winter as well as in Summer, though of course the canned ones are not as nice tasting as the ones fresh from the garden, such as we have now."

It was not long before there was lettuce from the Blake garden, and Mother Blake said it was the best she had ever eaten. Lettuce, too, Daddy Blake explained, would not keep over Winter, though it is sold in many stores when there is snow on the ground. But it comes from down South, where there is no Winter, being sent up on fast express trains.

"Lettuce is also as good to eat as are tomatoes," remarked Daddy Blake.

"It is said to be good for persons who have too many nerves, or, rather, for those whose nerves are not in good condition."

One day, when Hal and Mab came home from school, they hurried out, after leaving their books in the house, for they wanted to play some games."

"Aren't you going to work in your gardens a little while?" asked their mother. "Daddy is out there."

"Is he?" cried Hal. "Did he come home early?"

"Yes, on purpose to hoe among his tomatoes, I think he is cutting down the weeds which grew very fast since the last rain we had."

"Our parts of the garden are all right," said Hal. "My corn doesn't need hoeing."

"Nor my beans," said Mab. "But let's go out and see Daddy, Hal. Maybe he'll tell us something new about the garden."

"Well, where are your hoes, toodlekins?" called Daddy Blake, when he saw the two children coming toward him.

"There aren't any weeds in my corn," said Hal.

"Nor in my beans," added Mab.

"Not very many, it is true," said Daddy Blake. "But still there are some, and if you cut down the weeds when they are small, and when there are not many of them, you will find it easier to keep your garden looking neat, and, at the same time, make sure your crops will grow better, than if you wait and only hoe when the weeds are big.

"Gardens should be made to look nice, as well as be made free from weeds just because it is a good thing for the plants," went on Daddy Blake. "A good gardener takes pride in his garden. He wants to see every weed cut down. Besides, hoeing around your corn and beans makes the dirt nice and finely pulverized--like the pulverized sugar with which Mother makes icing for the cakes. And the finer the dirt is around the roots of a plant the more moisture it will hold and the better it will be for whatever is growing, as I have told you before."

"Well, we'll hoe a little bit," said Hal.

He and his sister got their hoes and soon they were so interested in cutting down the weeds in between the rows that they forgot about going off to play. Hal noticed that the ears of corn on his stalks were getting larger inside the green husk that kept the soft and tender kernels from being broken, as might have happened if they were out in the air, as tomatoes grow.

And so the gardens grew, just as did that of "Mistress Mary, quite contrary," about whom you may read in Mother Goose, or some book like that. Sometimes it rained and again it was quite dry, with a hot sun beating down out of the blue sky.

"If we don't get rain pretty soon we shall have to water the gardens,"

said Daddy Blake one night after about a week of very dry weather. Around the roots of the many plants the earth was caked and hard, so that very little air could get down to nourish the growing things.

"What do people do who have gardens where it doesn't rain as often as it does here, Daddy?" asked Mab.

"Well in very dry countries, such as some parts of ours near the places called deserts," said Mr. Blake, "men build large dams, and hold the water back in big ponds or lakes so it will last from one rainy season to another. The water is let run from the lake through little ditches, or pipes, so that the thirsty plants may drink. This is called the irrigation method, for to irrigate means to wet, soak or moisten with water. Each farmer or gardener is allowed to buy as much water as he needs, opening little gates at the ends of the main ditches or sluices, and letting the water run over his dry ground, in which he has dug furrows to lead the water where he most needs it.

"And sometimes, when there is too little water to use much of it this way, the gardeners do what they call intensive cultivation. Those are big words, but they mean that the man just hoes his ground every day around his plants, instead of perhaps once a week.

"You know there is moisture in the air, and at night dew falls. This wets the ground a little, and by digging and turning over the earth around the roots of his plants, the gardener makes it very fine so it holds the moisture longer. In this way a little bit of rain, or dew, lasts a long time. Come out now, and I'll show you something you perhaps have not noticed."

Daddy took Hal and Mab to the garden, and with a hoe he pointed to a place around Hal's corn stalks where the dry ground was hard, and baked by the sun.

A few strokes of the hoe and Daddy Blake had turned up some of the underlying earth. Hal and Mab saw that it was darker in color than that on top, and when they put their hands down in it the earth felt moist.

"What makes it?" asked Mab.

"Because the underneath part of the ground held the moisture in it. The top part was baked dry and the moisture had all gone away--evaporated in the sun, if you want to use big words, just as water dries in your hands after you wash them, even if you do not soak it up with a towel."