Vegetable gardening
Read about Vegetable gardening in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture
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Vegetable-gardening. In horticultural usage a vegetable is an edible herbaceous plant or part thereof that is commonly used for culinary purposes. The product may or may not be directly associated, in its development, with the flower: the root, stem, leaf, flower-bud, partially developed seed-receptacle, mature seed-receptacle, or seeds (either immature or mature), may constitute the edible part. Some vegetables are edible only after being cooked, others (such as cabbage), are eaten either cooked or raw, while others, as melons, are used only in the fresh state, and are really dessert articles. In some countries, melons and tomatoes are regarded as fruits, though American usage classifies them as vegetables. Although it is difficult to make a general definition that will include all vegetables and exclude none, the use of the term "vegetable" is so well understood that there is little difficulty in making proper application of it in common speech. All the art and science that has to do with the growing of the plants commonly called vegetables is popularly known as vegetable-gardening. The Latin term, olericulture, is sometimes used in formal writings as a synonym of vegetable-gardening, but has never become popular. Vegetable-gardening is usually considered as a branch of horticulture, coordinate with pomology (fruit-growing) and floriculture. However, certain vegetables, such as potatoes, when grown in large areas in rotation with general farm crops, are sometimes looked on as agricultural rather than horticultural subjects. Some of the crops may be classified as horticultural or agricultural depending on the uses for which they are to be employed. For example, beans that are grown for the green pods are horticultural subjects, but if the same varieties were to be grown for the mature seed for selling in the general market, they may be known as agricultural products. In like manner turnips may be horticultural subjects when grown in small areas for home or table use, but agricultural subjects when grown on large areas for stock-feeding. Vegetable-gardening may be divided into two great categories, depending on the disposition that is to be made of the products; namely, commercial gardening (see page 1997, Vol. IV, the article Market-Gardening), of which the purpose is to make money from the industry; and home- or amateur-gardening, in which the purpose is to raise a supply for family use. Commercial vegetable-gardening may be divided further into four fairly well-defined types: market-gardening proper, truck-gardening or truck-farming, forcing (see vol. III, page 1254), and the growing of vegetables for canning or pickling factories. Market-gardening proper involves intensive methods of culture, and is most highly developed near large cities. Truck-farming involves the growing of one or a few special vegetable crops, often as an adjunct to a system of general farming. These are usually grown in relatively large areas, and at considerable distance from market. Questions of climate, soil, and shipping facilities largely determine the location of truck-gardening areas. The South produces early vegetables for northern markets; the North produces cool-climate crops for winter storage, such as onions, cabbage, turnips. Sweet corn, tomatoes, and peas for canning purposes, and cucumbers for pickling, are grown where the soil and climate are especially adapted to their culture. Particular regions have become famous for the production of certain vegetable crops. Some examples are: Eastern Long Island for late cauliflower; Kalamazoo, Michigan, for celery: Rocky Ford, Colorado, and the Imperial Valley, California, for muskmelons; certain areas in Georgia for watermelons; southern Texas for the Bermuda type of onion; Norfolk, Virginia, for spinach, kale, and early potatoes; Ontario for turnips and other root-crops. Long-distance transportation has revolutionized vegetable-gardening in this country (see Packing, Transportation), and crops which were formerly grown only near market and had a limited season are now shipped across the continent, and may be procured in the same market, from some source, twelve months in the year. Head lettuce is an example. The practices. While in commercial vegetable-gardening the location is determined to considerable extent by soil and climate, in the home-garden the climate and the soil are largely beyond the choice of the gardener, since these matters are determined by the location of the homestead. The general effort in the home-garden is to secure products of high quality and to have a more or less continuous supply throughout the season. In market-gardening emphasis is usually placed on a few crops, whereas in home-gardening it is placed on a great variety of crops. The old-time home vegetable-garden or "kitchen-garden" was generally unsuited to the easy handling of the soil and to the efficient growing of the plants. Ordinarily it was a small confined area in which horse-tools could not be used (Vol. III, page 1738). The rows were short and close together, so that finger-work was necessary. The custom arose of growing crops in small raised beds, probably because such beds are earlier in the spring than those that are level with the ground. With the evolution of modern tillage tools, however, it is now advised that even in the home-garden finger-work be dispensed with as much as possible. Some of the very earliest crops may be grown in raised beds to advantage, but in general it is better to secure earliness by means of glass covers or by ameliorating the entire soil by under-drainage and the incorporation of humus and by judicious tillage. See Tillage and Machinery. In the home-garden on the farm particularly it is desirable that the rows be long and far enough apart to allow of tillage with horse-tools. Vegetable-gardeners are usually large users of stable-manure. Near the large cities the manure is bought in carload lots or hauled with four-horse teams, and it is used every year or even two or three times a year. The reason for this frequent and heavy use of manure is the necessity of improving the physical texture of the land so that it will be loose, open, and mellow, be early or "quick," and hold an abundant supply of moisture. In intensive vegetable-gardening there is no "resting” of the land and no green crops to be plowed under. The vegetable matter, therefore, has to be supplied almost entirely by barn-manures. In the larger and less intensive vegetable-growing farther removed from large cities, general agricultural practices can be employed to better advantage, such as rotation and green-manuring. Vegetable-gardeners, especially in the East and South, generally use largely, also, of concentrated fertilizers. In intensive vegetable-gardening it is important to start many of the crops under glass and to transplant the young plants to the open as soon as settled weather comes. See Transplanting. This is particularly true of tomatoes, very early lettuce, sweet potatoes, eggplants, peppers, and the early crops of celery, cabbage, and cauliflower. In the northern states muskmelons and sometimes watermelons and cucumbers are started under glass, being grown in pots, veneer "dirt bands," or upon inverted sods, whereby they are transferred to the open without disturbing the roots. Formerly the plants were started under hotbed or coldframe structures, but of late years there has been a great increase in the extent of glass-houses or forcing-houses. These are primarily for the purpose of growing certain crops to maturity outside of their normal season in the given locality, but are often used a part of the season for starting plants intended for transplanting. In these structures conditions can be controlled better than in hotbeds, and they are especially valuable for the starting of very early plants in cold weather. However, hotbeds and coldframes are still exceedingly important adjuncts to the vegetable-garden. They are almost indispensable for the reception of early plants that have been started in a greenhouse and require "hardening-off" before transplanting into the open ground. They can be moved when the person shifts to other land, and the space that they occupy can be utilized for outdoor crops later in the season. They are extensively used for starting early plants. Much vegetable-gardening in large cities is prosecuted on rented lands; therefore it may not be profitable to invest in such permanent structures as forcing-houses. The first cost of hotbeds and coldframes is less than that of forcing-houses, and this is often a very important item. For management of glass structures, see Hotbeds, Greenhouse, Forcing. The seed and variety problem is most complex. A mistake in the selection of a strain or kind may mean inability to meet a market demand either as regards characteristics or season. A round cabbage crowds out a pointed form. As soon as they mature, better varieties crowd out the Earliana tomato. Therefore the gardener must know varieties. Many seedsmen are making sincere efforts to provide good seed, and each year sees progress. Much remains to be accomplished in study and classification of varieties and types, and in the improvements of methods of seed-breeding and production. These problems are especially difficult because the crops are chiefly annuals, and changes take place with great rapidity. Experiment stations are now taking up this work on a sound scientific basis, a thing that could hardly be said of most early taxonomic studies. They are enjoying the cooperation of seed houses. There are great numbers of insect and fungous pests that attack the vegetable-garden crops. See article on Diseases and Insects. The spray-pump has now come to be a necessary adjunct to any efficient vegetable-garden. However, there are many difficulties beyond the reach of the spray, particularly those that persist year by year in the soil or which attack the roots rather than the tops. For such difficulties, the best treatment is to give rotation so far as possible and to avoid carrying diseased vines back on the land the next year in the manure. Even the club-root of cabbage can be starved out in a few years if cabbages or related plants are not grown on the area. In its best development vegetable-gardening is essentially an intensive cultivation of the land. Often it is conducted on property that is too high-priced for ordinary farming. Land that demands rent on a valuation of $1,000 an acre is often used for vegetable-gardens; and higher-priced land, held for other uses later, may be used temporarily. There is also intense competition near the large cities. These circumstances force the gardener to utilize his land to the utmost. Therefore, he must keep the land under crop every day in the year when it is possible for plants to live or grow. This results in various systems of succession-cropping and companion-cropping, whereby two or more crops are grown on the land the same season or even at the same time. (For examples of companion- cropping, see Market-Gardening.) Market-gardening is usually a business that demands enterprise, close attention to details, and much physical labor. If, with his knowledge of vegetable-growing, the gardener combines good business and executive ability, and an intimate knowledge of market conditions, he should be able, however, to make it a profitable and attractive business. Although the outlay is likely to be large, the returns are direct and quick. Extent and growth of the industry. The most recent published statistics of vegetable-gardening in the United States are those of the Thirteenth Census, 1910. According to the report of this census, based on the crop of 1909, the acreage devoted to vegetable production in the United States was 7,073,379 acres, including 3,668,855 acres of potatoes. The total value of all vegetables reported for that year was $418,110,154. Of the total number of farms in the United States, 4,969,540, or 78.1 per cent reported having farm-gardens; 4,261,776 gave the acreage devoted to vegetables and the value of the product 41,731 farms reporting vegetables to a value of over $500 each, and 4,220,045 farms less than $500 each. "Farms of the former group usually produce vegetables chiefly for sale and make them an important part of their business, while on a large proportion of the other farms vegetables are raised only for home consumption." In 1909, the value of the vegetable crop (including potatoes) in the following states amounted to over 10 per cent of the total value of all crops in the respective states: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Nevada. According to the figures, the production of vegetables between 1899 and 1909 increased from $237,000,000 to about $418,000,000. This includes the potato, which is grown partly as a farm crop and partly as a vegetable-garden crop. With this most important commodity omitted, the corresponding figures for the miscellaneous vegetables are $139,000,000 and $251,000,000. The increase in the production of all other horticultural products, including fruit, flowers, nursery products and nuts, is from $152,000,000 to $273,000,000. A map showing centers of vegetable production in the United States would show changes no less marked. New districts have been established almost without number in all sections of the country. The business is much more evenly distributed throughout the United States than formerly, and the states that have been regarded as great trucking states are no longer holding their preeminence without question. Thus, Illinois and Indiana have become great vegetable states, with the market-gardening for Chicago, trucking in southern Illinois for both Chicago and St. Louis, muckland trucking in the swamplands (see Muckland-Gardening, Vol. IV), and production of crops for the cannery. Similar statements might be made of other states. Ten years ago, truck-farming was thought of principally as production of vegetables in the South for shipment North. The advance in the importance of vegetables in the dietary, together with the rapid growth of the more southerly cities, has brought about a marked development in the production of vegetables in northern parts for shipment southward, particularly the cool-season crops for consumption when the gardens of the warmer climates are practically unemployed on account of the heat. The production of cabbage and potatoes in the North for shipment southward has long been a great industry, but of recent years important centers in the growing of cucumbers, peas, beans, and of the muckland crops, celery, lettuce, and onions, have been developed. Improved transportation facilities have made California an important source of supply for eastern markets. The canning industry as connected with vegetable-gardening has been an important factor in making possible a continuous supply of vegetables throughout the year, and this industry has recently made much progress. Three phases of this industry utilize vegetable-garden crops—factory, farm, and home canning. Factory canning uses the products from a comparatively large acreage of crops on the truck-gardening or general farming scale. Corn, tomatoes, peas, and string beans are extensively handled by canning factories. Farm canning promises to be a means whereby the market-gardener or truck-farmer may turn his crops into greater profit when markets are glutted. Home canning is a means of preserving a supply of perishable vegetable products from one's kitchen-garden for home use. The insistence of the population on a supply of vegetables through all the months has made possible the construction of greenhouse ranges, many of which are now measured in acres. The crops are lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and radishes in the order named. While the business is not so satisfactory in the autumn months, because of poor growth conditions and on account of light demand, the returns after the first of the year are sufficient to render the business profitable and to justify increases in the areas under glass. Market-gardening has kept pace with the growth of the cities, although some of the famous centers are declining on account of the great increase in real-estate values. The auto truck is an important factor in making it possible for the gardener to take advantage of the lower interest charges incident to the use of more distant lands. In the practice of vegetable production, the most conspicuous development has been the introduction of overhead irrigation. Hundreds of acres are now watered in this way. The value of this practice is evident when it is considered that moisture is more often than otherwise the factor which prevents the gardener from reaping returns from improvements which are far more costly than in other lines of agriculture. The past ten years has seen the beginning of organization among vegetable producers. Cooperative selling is becoming a larger factor in the selling of produce on distant markets, and garden districts not yet ready for cooperative selling are finding material advantage in unified action in matters of the gathering of information as to their methods, in the purchase of supplies, the standardization of packages, the improvement of local market conditions, and of transportation facilities, in overseeing legislation and securing assistance through investigational agencies in the solution of local problems. The Vegetable Growers' Association of America was organized in 1908 and has brought into contact with one another a large group of men from all sections of the country. The New York State Vegetable Growers' Association, formed in 1911, has been the pioneer in state organization. All of these societies, national, state, and local, are finding new fields of usefulness and are each year serving directly an increased proportion of the men in the business, while all find advantage through their promotion of the general welfare. Education; literature. For many years a course in vegetable-gardening has been included in the curricula of most of the agricultural colleges of the United States and Canada, and more or less attention has been given to research in vegetable-gardening problems on the part of agricultural experiment stations. However, until within the last few years, both the teaching and research in reference to this subject were in most institutions conducted as incidental matters by some member of the staff whose principal energies were demanded by other horticultural interests. At the present time much more attention than formerly is being given to the subject of vegetable-gardening in educational institutions, and many of the agricultural colleges and stations now have one or more men devoting their entire time to vegetable interests. In some of the institutions several courses are offered in vegetable work, including an introductory course, an advanced course in market-gardening, and courses in vegetable-forcing, systematic vegetable crops, and undergraduate research. Provision is also made for graduate work in problems bearing on vegetable-gardening. Vegetable-gardening is also found to be especially adapted for use as a basis for giving instruction in the fundamental principles of crop production in schools, especially in those having only a limited area of land available for "laboratory” purposes. The simple equipment involved, the possibility of using odd bits of ground, the relatively short time in which results can be expected, and the high value of the product to be derived from a small area, together with its easy adaptation to educational purposes, all render this phase of agriculture especially serviceable in such activities. The work is conducted on special plots laid out for that purpose, and on the home farms and back yards. There is a large literature devoted to vegetable-gardening, although much of it applies chiefly to amateur or home growing. Leading current books on the general subject of vegetable-gardening are those by Greiner, Green, Henderson, Rawson, Landreth, Bailey, Watts, Lloyd, and Corbett. For California one should consult Wickson's "California Vegetables in Garden and Field." and for the Atlantic South, Rolfs' "Vegetable-Growing in the South for Northern Markets," Oemler's "Truck-Farming at the South," and Rolfs' "Subtropical Vegetable-Gardening." There are many books devoted to special topics, and there are many others which in their time were of great practical value, but which are now chiefly known as recording the history of the epoch in which they were written. Only one American work has been devoted to descriptions of varieties of vegetables, as the works of Downing, Thomas, and others have to varieties of fruits. This work is Fearing Burr's "Field and Garden Vegetables of America,” Boston, 1863, and the abridgment of it in 1866, called "Garden Vegetables and How to Cultivate Them." A list of the American vegetable-gardening literature to that date may be found in Bailey's "Principles of Vegetable-Gardening" (1901). See also Horticulture, Literature of, Vol. III. Persons who desire a cyclopedic account of vegetables should consult Vilmorin's "Les Plantes Potageres," an English translation of the first edition of which is published in London as "The Vegetable Garden." Odd and little-known vegetables are treated in Paillieux & Bois, "Le Potager d'un Curieux," Paris, 3d ed. 1899. Vegetable-growing in California. It is an interesting fact that although California's horticultural prominence now rests on fruit products, the first attraction to the new state, after the gold discovery, was the wonderful growth of garden vegetables. The reports of immense size, of acreage product and of prices secured, were almost incredible because so much in advance of ordinary standards, but the statements were so fully authenticated that many were drawn to California by them. These horticultural pioneers, however, soon found that immigrants from Asia and the Mediterranean region, by their cheap living and by doing their own work, could cut under American growers who had to employ high-priced labor, and so the latter retired from the field, leaving the opportunity to the frugal and thrifty foreigner. Thus vegetable-growing, from an American point of view, came into disrepute and largely retains such disadvantage at present. The result is that the American largely avoids market-gardening, while Asiatics and South Europeans are thriving on it. There has been a reflection of the same disfavor in the farm growing of vegetables for home use, and our farming population, including the fruit-growers who should know and do better, is largely dependent on alien vegetable peddlers or products of canneries instead of fresh home-grown esculents, which would be cheaper and inexpressibly better than canned or transported supplies. Fortunately there arose about twenty-five years ago a large industry in growing vegetables for overland shipment and for canning which clothed the plant-cultures involved in this trade with a new dignity and importance attractive to American growers. Cabbage, cauliflower, and celery for eastern shipment, asparagus for canning and for shipment, tomatoes for canning, and the like, have all become large special crops, while some other plants, like lima beans, which are chiefly grown in gardens elsewhere, have become field crops in California covering very large acreage. Such enterprises have enlisted American citizens and changed the popular conception of the dignity and opportunity of vegetable-growing. A measure of this influence, as well as of the extent of the product, may be had in the average annual shipments of green vegetables beyond state lines for several years ending with 1914: Vegetables Carloads Artichokes (Globe) 150 Asparagus 350 Celery 2,500 Cauliflower 1,000 Cabbage 1,000 Potatoes 10,000 Lettuce 300 Tomatoes 2,000 Mixed vegetables 1,000 The canned-vegetable output of 1914 was 2,373,182 cases (each containing twenty-four 2 1/2 pound tins) divided as follows: asparagus, 800,380; string beans, 81,905: peas, 188,667; tomatoes, 1,183,705; other vegetables, 119,525. In addition to the foregoing there is the dry-bean product, which reached a total of 3,670,000 bags of 80 pounds each in 1915, and of sugar beets which was 203,200 tons in 1915. California conditions affecting vegetable-growing are wide and various. Nowhere else perhaps is it more essential that certain things should be done just at the right time and in the right way. If these requirements are fairly met the product is large and fine; if they are neglected the failure is sharp and complete. This fact has given rise to the impression that California is a hard place to grow vegetables, which is not true unless one lacks local knowledge or the nerve to apply it. One of the chief causes of failure is in following seasons and methods which have yielded success under conditions prevailing in the states east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. If one begins garden-making in the springtime the plants do not secure deep rooting, which is necessary to carry them to success in the dry season, and the garden is likely to be a disappointment. If, on the other hand, all the hardier vegetables are sown in succession from September until February or March, there will be continuous produce through the winter and into the early summer. The chief shipments of vegetables from California are made during the late fall and winter and are taken right from the ground to the cars without protection or storage. Tender vegetables, like corn, beans, tomatoes, and the like, however, can be grown in the winter only in a few frostless places. They must either be pushed to a finish in the fall or sown early in the spring and carried into the dry summer as far as necessary either by natural moist land or by irrigation. There are a few localities, however, where tomatoes will fruit early in the spring from fall plantings, and peppers will live through the winter and bear a second season's crop on the old plants. The possession of an irrigation supply is the secret of full satisfaction in California vegetable-growing, but a small amount of water, if skillfully applied, will work wonders. Irrigation will enable one to have something crisp and delicious in the garden every day in the year in the California valleys. It is true, however, that much can be done without irrigation by beginning at the opening of the rainy season in September, growing the hardier vegetables while moisture is ample even on the drier lands during the late fall and winter, and keeping the lower lands well plowed and cultivated to prevent evaporation until the tender vegetables can be trusted in the open air, and continuing cultivation assiduously afterward so that moisture can be conserved in the soil as long as possible for them. That this is thoroughly practicable is seen in the fact that the large lima-bean product is grown almost entirely without irrigation from plantings made as late as May and the whole growth of the plant is achieved without a drop of water except that stored in the soil. The same is true of the corn crop; perfect corn can be grown without a drop of rain or irrigation from planting to husking. In such cases, however, the winter rains are retained in the soil by cultivation. If winter growth is made by rainfall, summer growth can be had on the same land by irrigation. In this way irrigation becomes eminently desirable in securing all-the-year growth, which cannot be had by rainfall. With good soil and abundant irrigation it is possible to secure four garden crops in rotation within the year—the hardy plants in the fall and winter months; the tender plants in the spring and summer. Of course the adjustment of all these means to desired ends requires good perception and prompt action, and explains why those who have been accustomed to plant at a fixed date and do little but cut weeds afterward may find it hard to secure the best results in California. And yet the Californian grower has great advantages in his deep rich soil, in freedom from many diseases (which thrive in a humid atmosphere) and in an exceedingly long growing season. Local adaptations for different vegetables are sometimes quite sharply drawn and selection of lands for large specialty crops must be made with reference to them. The result is that the earliest vegetables come from practically frostless places in the Colorado River region of southeast California; almost all the lima beans are grown on a coast plain from Santa Barbara southward; the celery for eastern shipment is nearly all grown on the peat lands of Orange and San Joaquin counties; the cabbage comes largely from San Mateo County; asparagus and tomatoes from Alameda County and river islands of Sacramento and San Joaquin counties, and so on. Smaller areas of these products and others not mentioned are more widely scattered, but everywhere the local soil, exposure, and climate are chief considerations. There is prospect of great increase in all the vegetable products of California. Fresh and dried vegetables enter largely into ocean traffic with distant Pacific ports. Interstate trade is constantly increasing and canned vegetables are contracted in advance to European distributors as well as to dealers in all the Americas.
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