CHAPTER IV

THE PLANTING PLAN


Having selected the garden spot, the next consideration, naturally, is
what shall be planted in it.

The old way was to get a few seed catalogues, pick out a list of the
vegetables most enthusiastically described by the (wholly
disinterested) seedsman, and then, when the time came, to put them in
at one or two plantings, and sowing each kind as far as the seed would
go. There is a better way--a way to make the garden produce more, to
yield things when you want them, and in the proper proportions.

All these advantages, you may suppose, must mean more work. On the
contrary, however, the new way makes very much less work and makes
results a hundred per cent. more certain. It is not necessary even that
more thought be put upon the garden, but forethought there must be.
Forethought, however, is much more satisfactory than hind-thought.

In the new way of gardening there are four great helps, four things
that will be of great assistance to the experienced gardener, and that
are indispensable to the success of the beginner. They are the Planting
Plan, the Planting Table, the Check List and the Garden Record.

Do not become discouraged at the formidable sound of that paragraph and
decide that after all you do not want to fuss so much over your garden;
that you are doing it for the fun of the thing anyway, and such
intricate systems will not be worth bothering with. The purpose of