to your strength and well-being and making you appreciate the Eden
joy of gardening. An hour in the open air is worth more than a dozen
expensive prescriptions by an expensive doctor.

The only tools necessary for a small garden are a spade or spading
fork, a hoe, a rake, and a line or piece of cord.

First of all, clear the ground of all rubbish, sticks, stones,
bottles, etc. (especially whisky bottles).

Choose the sunniest spot in the yard for your garden.

Dig up the soil to a depth of 6 to 10 inches, using a spade or
spading fork. (Deeper for parsnips and some other roots. Ed.) Break
up all the lumps with the spade or fork.

If you live in a section where your neighbors have gardens, you
might club together to hire a teamster for a day to do the plowing
and harrowing for you all, thus saving a large amount of labor.

After your garden has been well dug, it must be fertilized before
any planting is done. In order to produce large and well-grown crops
it is often necessary to fertilize before each planting. Very good
prepared fertilizers can be bought at seed stores, but horse or cow
manure is much better, as it lightens the soil in addition to
supplying plant food. Use street sweepings if you can get them.

The manure should be well dug into the ground, at least to the full
depth of the top soil. The ground should then be thoroughly raked,
as seeds must be sown in soil which has been finely powdered.