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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
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105 east 22D STREET, NEW YORK
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
BY M. LOUISE GREENE, M.Pd., Ph.D. (Yale)
NEW YORK CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE .... MCMXI
Copyright, 19 lo, by
The Russell Sage Foundation
Printed, April, 1910
Reprinted, April, 191 1
PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO. PHILADELPHIA
FOREWORD
"Among School Gardens" is intended, (i) To answer the questions: What are school gardens? What purpose do they serve? Where are the best? (2) To give such explicit directions that a novice may be able to start a school garden; and to show that even the simplest one can be of great benefit to children. (3) To share with those already interested in school gardens knowl- edge of work done in different places.
Until a few years ago it was difficult to obtain the right sort of instruction in school gardening unless one left home for a long period. Many are unable to do this. General information and some experience in cultivating flowers in a city yard constituted the few foundation stones upon which I decided to build a good superstructure of knowledge applicable to all phases of the sub- ject. The fact that 1 had to collect my own equip- ment may enable me to help others who cannot obtain the proper training for school gardening. Some instruction from Mr. Herbert D. Hemenway, one of the pioneers of the movement, consid- erable practice at the greenhouse bench, in the teacher's class and in charge of children under Mr. Stanley H. Rood, Director of the excellently equipped School of Horticulture, Hartford, Conn., and work with Mr. Henry G. Parsons, lecturer on
FOREWORD
the subject in the summer school of New York University, constituted the chief part of my preparation. Visits to some of the best gardens in our own country and Canada were also made. Later, at the suggestion of Miss Mary Marshall Butler, of Yonkers, N. Y., the Russell Sage Foundation asked me to spend a summer study- ing school gardens with a view to this publication.
I have endeavored to make the book a readable, reliable statement of what seems fundamental in school gardening. It would be impossible to mention the names of the many persons, reaching into the hundreds, who have helped in gathering data. Almost without exception all who were asked gave generously of their interest, knowledge, and illustrative material. Some of the latter was unavailable. What has been used shows special phases of the work and as wide a range as possible of school garden activities. Frequently busy men and women gave from half a day to several days of their time. Without such assistance this book could not have come into existence.
The writer acknowledges with sincere appre- ciation the courtesies received from the following: Assistant Secretary Hays; Professors L. C. Corbett and Dick J. Crosby, of the United States Department of Agriculture; Miss Susan B. Sipe, Supervisor of Nature Study in the District of Columbia and collaborator in the Department of Agriculture; Miss Louise Klein Miller, Curator of School Gardens, Cleveland, Ohio; Miss Florence
vi
FOREWORD
E. Lillie, of Minneapolis, Minn.; Miss Emilie Yunker, Woman's Outdoor Art League of Louis- ville, Ky. ; Miss Stella Nathan, Supervisor of School Gardens for the Board of Education, Philadelphia, Pa.; Mr. John L. Randall, of the Pittsburgh Play- ground Association; Professor Otis W. Caldwell, of Chicago University, Chicago, 111., and Professor Benjamin Marshall Davis, of Miami University.
This list, brief as it is, would be incomplete were no mention made of indebtedness to Doctor James W. Robertson and the staff of Macdonald College, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec; to Professor S. D. McCready, and Mr. E. A. Howes, of Guelph, Ontario.
For the critical reading of the chapter on "Weeds" I am indebted to Professor Alexander W. Evans, of Yale University; of chapters con- cerning soil, planting, etc., to Mr. R. F. Powell, Superintendent of City Farming, in Buifalo, N. Y.; and for reading the manuscript as a whole, to Mr. Edward Mahoney and Mr. Stanley H. Rood.
To Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company and The Macmillan Company, to the editors of Suburban Life, the National Association of Audu- bon Societies and the National Cash Register Com- pany of Dayton, Ohio, and to James Vick's Sons, Rochester, New York, acknowledgment is made for the use of excerpts, lists, and photographs.
M. Louise Greene.
New Haven, Connecticut, March, iqio.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword v
List of Illustrations xi
CHAPTER I The Evolution of the School Garden ... 3
CHAPTER II Different Kinds of School Gardens . . . -41
CHAPTER HI Soil Fertility 83
CHAPTER IV Cost of Equipment 1 1 1
CHAPTER V Planning and Planting the Garden .... 145
CHAPTER VI After Planting, What? 177
CHAPTER VII An Interlude: Some Garden Weeds . . . 203
CHAPTER VIII The School Garden in Vacation and in Term Time . 221
CHAPTER IX
Some Last Things 263
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
APPENDICES
|
A. Notes |
. . . 279 |
|
B. Testimony |
• • • 321 |
|
C. How to Plant a Tree . |
• • • 336 |
|
D. Ten Principles of Pruning . |
... 338 |
|
E. A Hymn for Arbor Day |
. . . 339 |
|
Bibliography |
• ■ • 343 |
|
Index |
• • - 377 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Fairview Garden School, Yonkers, N. Y.
Frontispiece
"Mine" 5
Domestic Science or Kitchen Garden, Oakland
School, Cleveland, Ohio . . opp. page 7
Macdonald College, Ste. Anne de Bellevue.
School garden on the "group plan" . 14
Section of a "Group " Garden : one or two children
on each vegetable plot 15
Guelph School Gardens, July, 1909 .... 16
Bowesville School Grounds, Canada . 17
Teachers' Class visiting the Merden School Gar- dens, Canada 19
" Boys should be Formed not Reformed." tional Cash Register Gardens . opp.
Morgan School, Washington, D. C. .
School of Horticulture, Hartford, Conn. .
Boys' Plots, School of Horticulture .
A Teacher's Garden, School of Horticulture
DeWitt Clinton Park School Garden, New York
City 28
Second Planting, Wainwright Garden, Philadel- phia opp. page 29
Corner of Ludlow Schoolyard, Washington, D. C. 31
Second Grade children making Cuttings. Nor- mal School, Washington, D. C 33
Macdonald Consolidated School and Gardens,
Canada . . 35
xi
|
Na- |
|
|
)age |
21 |
|
22 |
|
|
26 |
|
|
27 |
|
|
27 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A Philadelphia School Garden . . opp. page 37
Could You Do Better? 42
Housekeeping Room, DeWitt Clinton Park, New
York City 48
"Little Brother Helps" 50
Vacant Lot in Louisville — The first planting . 54 Vacant Lot in Louisville— After several seasons'
planting 55
The New Technical High School, Cleveland, Ohio
opp. page 59 Crippled children farming in the heart of New
York City 60
Garden at Bellevue Hospital, New York City . 63 Rock Garden, Ludlow School, Dubuque, Iowa 67 Canadian boys spraying Potatoes .... 70 Canby, Minn., Public School Garden and Experi- mental Farm 72
School Garden, State Normal School, Kearney,
Nebraska 74
What Is! 78
What Might Be 78
Children Who Need School Gardens ... 84 The Raking-drill. Carroll Garden, Philadelphia,
Pa. opp. page 89
A Cleveland Lot — Before cultivation opp. page 97 The Same Cleveland Lot — After cultivation
opp. page 96 Device for Experiments with Soil . . . .98
Hauling Street Sweepings, Louisville, Ky. . . 103 Chart of Eighteen-Cent Garden . .112
Eighteen-Cent Garden . . . opp. page 115 Fourth Grade boys fixing Fence, Normal School,
Louisville, Ky 119
A Model Tool-House .... opp. page 121
Hazelwood Park School Garden, Pittsburgh, Pa. . 127
xii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Section of Wooden Pergola 129
Doan School Garden, Cleveland, showing central
arbor and pergola . . . opp. page 131
Good Tools
Cultivating Stick ....
Proper Use of the Spade . Rosedale Garden, Cleveland, Ohio . A Garden should have a Bird-box . Plan of Doan School Garden Plan of a Model Garden
Kindergarten Class, Carroll Garden, Philadelphia
opp. page 1 5 1
Plan of Axe School Garden, Philadelphia
Lines Stretched for Planting, Red Wing, Minn
Crops Appearing, Red Wing, Minn. .
Garden of Francis W. Parker School, Chicago
Bed Marker, or Marking Board
Eight-year-old boy who made his own Marker
Plan of Planting used by Teachers' Class, Henry
G. Parsons, Instructor Planting Operations .... opp. page 170 Planting Operations (continued) . opp. page 171 Aquatic Garden with Fountain .... 172
A School Garden Class, Red Wing, Minn. . .178
Toolhouse Decorated for Harvest Festival
opp. page 181
Root Cage or Planting Frame 183
View of End Piece showing Grooves
Children of the Normal School, Louisville, Ky., and
their tulips blooming in March . opp. page 187 Planting Plan, showing succession of crops. Wil-
lard School Garden, Cleveland, Ohio . .189
Outfit for Insect Study 190
Insect Spreading Board 191
xiii
133 '35 140
'45
147 148
50
53
55
57 61
64 66
69
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Killing Jar"
Thinning his Plants
"The Father of the Man without a Job" Normal Student's Home Garden, Washington
D. C
Writing up the Day's Diary .... Home-made Breeding Cage .... First Year's Growth of Yellow Dock
Jimson Weed
Plantain
Common Purslane or Portulaca Oleracea
Couch Grass
Woodbery Garden, Baltimore — The lot before
cultivation
Woodbery Lot — After the children made their
school garden
Pigweed
192 194
195
196 197 199 204 204 206 207 208
210
21 1 212 212 213 214 215 217 218
Carpet Weed
Leaf, Spike and Root of Broad-Leaved Dock First Year's Growth of Broad-leaved Dock
Poison Ivy
Flowering Plant of Burdock ....
Mullein
Home Garden of Two Boys of the "Training Gar- den" opp. page 223
Comparing Crops 223
What Park Life Boys Plan 226
Park Life School Garden, Dubuque, Iowa . 228
The Daily Lecture for Park Life Boys . . . 229 The New Half of Fairview Garden School, Yon-
kers, N. Y opp. page 231
Pittsburgh Children enjoying their School Garden 232 Making the Most of a Small Space .... 234 The Douglas School Garden, Cincinnati . . . 236
xiv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Conquering Dififkulties, P. S. 41, Manhattan, New
York City 238
School Garden and Arsenal Park, Pittsburgh, Pa. 239
Plan of Hyannis Garden 242
Sixth Grade Pupils Budding Peaches, Normal,
111 245
Child with Grain 248
Formal Garden made by the Children of School
No. 10, Indianapolis . . . opp. page 251 First Grade Children learning the Names of the
Flowers, Lakeview School, Pueblo, Col. . . 252
DeWitt Clinton Park School Garden, New York . 253 Fourth Grade children cutting Grain, Lakeview
School, Pueblo 258
A Happy Crowd of Harvesters opp. page 263 Philadelphia Mill Girl Gardeners . opp. page 267 A Member of the "City Beautiful Club," Louis- ville 268
A Welcome Guest at Fairview 271
Our Pumpkins, Lakeview School, Pueblo . . 272 Exhibit of Vegetables raised by School Children,
Louisville, Ky opp. page 275
XV
CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
"School gardens are not intended to create gardeners or farmers, but to afford the growing boy or girl an opportunity for many-sided development."
A SCHOOL garden may be defined as any garden where children are taught to care for flowers, or vegetables, or both, by one who can, while teaching the life history of the plants and of their friends and enemies, instil in the children a love for outdoor work and such knowledge of natural forces and their laws as shall develop character and efficiency.
To make it apparent that size is not a crucial matter, a second definition may be that it "is any garden in which a boy or girl of school age takes an active interest. It may be a tiny seedling grow- ing in a flowerpot indoors or an extensive series of garden crops in a large garden outdoors. The gar- dens may be collective or individual or both; they may be at the school or the home or both. In all these cases the plants to be grown are much the same and the methods involved in growing them
3
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
are similar;"* while the underlying purpose of the teaching is threefold, educational, industrial, and social — or moral, since it is only in relation to others that moral conduct or character exists.
As the founder of the children's school farm in DeWitt Clinton Park, New York, wrote in her first report:
" I did not start a garden simply to grow a few vegetables and flowers. The garden was used as a means to show how willing and anxious children are to work, and to teach them in their work some necessary civic virtues; private care of public property, economy, honesty, application, con- centration, self government, civic pride, justice, the dignity of labor, and the love of nature by opening to their minds the little we know of her mysteries, more wonderful than any fairy tale."f
The virtues here enumerated can best be taught in the school garden with the individual plot and ownership, because there the interest is greater, the rewards are more desirable, and cause and effect are more frequently and clearly demon- strable. The cultivation of such virtues is at the minimum when the garden of a school is only a bit of decorative planting in the care of which the children have no part. School-ground decoration of this type is better than none, for like pictures on the schoolroom walls, it sends out a daily influence
* Weed and Emerson: The School Garden Book, p. 3.
t Mrs. Henry Parsons in Report of the First Children's School Farm in New York City, for 1Q02-1Q04.
4
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
in behalf of orderliness and beauty. So much the more reason why the decorative planting should be of the best, that it may teach symmetry of arrangement, harmony of line and color, and unity throughout.
Such a garden may inspire some degree of
"Mine"
civic pride in the children and some respect for public property through the feeling that their school home is superior to that of others. But these ideas are likely to be limited in practical re- sults to children who have an eye for natural beauty. Introduce but a little bulb planting by the children, however, a little active participa-
5
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
tion in the care of the plants and grounds, and at once to each and every child the garden becomes "our" garden, and an injury to it a personal affair; any praise or merit becomes a comment about something " I made or helped to make." With this sense of participation, comes genuine private care of public property. Of necessity, there must follow with this kind of interest, many self-deter- mined convictions on the part of the child as to what is morally as well as culturally right and wrong in the garden. Lessons like these become gradually ingrained modes or habits of thought, and the child fibre is toughened morally.
The larger the field the gardening offers, other things being equal, the greater the opportunity for development of the child. Hence, the plea for individual beds and also for co-operative labor on larger areas, as on paths, and on class or sample plots. The union of these two kinds of tasks best illustrates life where each individual works out his own salvation; if happily and usefully, he must do it with due consideration for others and for his own share of responsibility for the public good.
For the understanding of a subject, it is neces- sary to know both its past and present. Con- sequently a brief history of school gardening is in order. Putting aside for a time the consideration of the few gardens, — not more than four or five, — which were started prior to 1900, the movement in America is barely ten years old. Yet, like the occasional stations of the wireless telegraph, it
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throws a chain of gardens as it were, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Florida to Maine; while in our island possessions the people are fol- lowing our lead, as in Porto Rico, or have ante- dated our experiment, as in Hawaii.*
In the United States, the initial step in establish- ing school gardens was taken by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society which, in 1890, sent Mr. Henry Lincoln Clapp to make a study of school gardens in Europe. As a result of his report and the work of the society in encouraging children to grow flowers and vegetables at their homes, interest in school gardening was aroused and slowly but steadily increased. Mr. Clapp him- self, Master of the George Putnam school of Roxbury, Massachusetts, instituted, in 1891, the first school garden in America, — a wild-flower garden, for which his pupils brought the earth and collected the ferns. The garden is still in existence with some 150 native wild plants. Since 1900 a vegetable plot with individual beds has been added.
* In Hawaii "The course in the Normal School includes garden and field work, budding, grafting, potting, transplanting, study of domestic and wild animals, beneficial and injurious insects, etc. Plats of ground are assigned to groups of students who supervise the work of the pupils in the training school in caring for these plats. These training school pupils work together by grades, raising vege- tables which are disposed of in the city markets. The proceeds are used to purchase school equipment. The other grade schools of the city are also given instruction similar to that in the training school by a traveling instructor, and a portion of each school's grounds is set apart for the growing of vegetables." Alger, E. G.: Circulars of Educational Information No. 13, Dept. of Education, Vermont, IQ04.
7
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Mr. Clapp reported that about the beginning of the last century many European proprietors of large landed estates instituted gardens or small farms for the instruction of their younger work- men and for the training of overseers.* Out of this practice grew a few famous colleges, schools of agriculture and farm schools, some of which spe- cialized in one or more branches of garden, field or dairy work. The courses of study were planned to cover three or four years' work, and were offered to children over fourteen years of age who were the sons or daughters of the farmers or laborers on the estates. Governments sometimes became interested in these schools and were even induced to lend them aid.
From such experimental schools there gradually arose the belief that something ought to be done to give children of the rural schools who had reached the age of six some definite instruction in the use of their environment so that they might draw from it both wealth and happiness. The underlying reason for putting such instruction in the schools was not an educational one. The primary object was not to train brain, hands and muscles at the same time, nor to increase brain power through skilful use of the hands and prac- tice in the co-ordination of the little used muscles; it was rather an economic one, to stop the flow of unskilled labor to the towns and cities, to build up the agricultural wealth of the nation.
* See Appendix A, Note i.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
Some of the German states early led the way in the practical demonstration of the value of such instruction. Schleswig-Holstein in 1814, Nassau in 1817, and Prussia in 1819 introduced , into the rural schools the culture of fruits and vegetables. Other German states soon followed. Though the point of view was economic rather than educational, the very stress laid upon agri- cultural results necessitated careful training of the teachers for such garden work and, later, brought the introduction of plant study, even in the cities,* as a special feature of the work of the elementary and secondary schools.
By royal edicts, in 1869, both Austria and Swe- den took up the school garden movement. Aus- tria demanded that both a garden and a place for agricultural experiments should be established wherever practicable in connection with rural schools. Sweden required that every school should have a garden containing from 70 to 1 50 square yards of ground properly laid out.
Belgium has in her elementary schools a compul- sory course in horticulture in which she emphasizes the raising of fruit and vegetables and truck farm- ing, the last being the main industry of her people.
* Berlin has a large central garden as well as smaller ones adjacent to her schools. The central garden contains about ten acres. From it, on regular distribution days, there are sent to the schools from 50,000 to 100,000 specimens for biological or botanical study. The daily papers announce beforehand the kinds to be sent. Classes visit the garden to study the growing plants and trees. See Bennett, H. C. : School Gardens in Great Cities, pp. 7-9.
9
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
France, since 1880, has recognized the school garden in the curriculum of her elementary schools. By order of the French Ministry of Education, courses in the normal schools are made to include such instruction as will enable graduate teachers "to carry to the elementary schools an exact knowledge of the soil, the means of improving it, methods of cultivation, management of a farm and garden."* The French Ministry states that the main object is "not to teach the business of farming but to inspire a love for the country and to develop the natural tendencies of children to become interested in flowers, birds, etc." This is the law, but in practice the school gardens as late as 1902 were universally maintained more for the benefit of the teachers, many of whom are enthusiastic horticulturists, than for the welfare of the child. It is only since 1902 that gardens have been attached to the rural schools and con- ducted more and more from the new viewpoint.
Russia, like France, requires every school re- ceiving public funds to maintain a garden for flowers and vegetables and also a plot for orchard and forest trees, and, in addition, an apiary. Short summer courses are provided for teachers. Seeds and books are furnished free, and traveling instructors are sent to see that the gardens are well laid out, properly started, and the courses
* Addis, Wilford: Courses in Agriculture in the Higher Elementary Schools of France. U. S. Bureau of Education. Report of Com- missioners for 1889-1890, Vol. II., pp. 1007-1013.
10
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
of Study well planned. Still, it is the industrial idea that is everywhere prominent.
In England, school garden work has been carried on during the last seventeen years, but until recently chiefly in connection with supplementary schools or maintained by private philanthropy. In 1895, the Department of Education added cottage gardening as an optional study for boys. The gardens were managed by the master of the school or by a gardener from the neighborhood. This method has been improved upon by the present system of supervision. "Each county now has its agricultural inspector. They inspect and often instruct in all the schools throughout their respective counties, lecture evenings and Saturdays to teachers preparing for examination, and carry out a most detailed system of marking day and evening school gardens, and judging flower shows. They plan the gardens and seem to feel that the results should be the best obtainable, even though the workers are children, else the parents will not be in sympathy with the work."* Many of the latter have cottage gardens and are critical judges of the worth of the children's work.
A report in 1908 by Horace J. Wright, inspector
* Sipe, Susan B.: School Gardening and Nature Study in English Rural Schools and in London. U. S. Dept. of Agric, Office of Experiment Stations, Bulletin 204.
The examinations referred to are those of the Royal Horticultural Society covering topics in elementary agriculture. Those who pass successfully are entitled, in some counties, to additional salaries.
I I
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
for Surrey, gives "in round figures 8300 pupils receiving instruction in gardening at 600 ele- mentary day schools throughout England." These, as well as the "evening school gardens" or "continuation gardens," are steadily increasing. Some counties make liberal grants for the work while others are parsimonious. The evening school gardens were first established in Surrey in i8q2, and are intended for boys employed during the day. To such the teacher or gardener of the day school classes gives individual attention twice a week in lessons of at least an hour. The school garden plot is usually one rod square. "There must be a teacher for at least every fourteen boys." The pupils must be eleven years of age or older. Prizes are given to both the boys and the teacher. Indeed, the teachers' salaries are determined somewhat by the total number of marks given to each garden and its relation to the county's average as determined by the county in- spector. Salaries for a garden are based upon a fee of three shillings a pupil for each plot culti- vated throughout the summer, with the addi- tion of merit grants according to the rating of the garden. Sometimes the teacher having the best garden in the county, "the county premier," is awarded a medal or silver watch.
In Switzerland almost alone we find emphasis placed upon the pedagogic and the utilitarian value of the school garden. For some years, the Swiss have kept both ends equally in view.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
In the middle grade of the primary schools, pupils acquire some knowledge of agriculture. Instruction is given in soils and their fer- tilization and in practical field work. Such instruction, like the nature work in our own schools, is a part of the regular curriculum. Its aim is pedagogical. The utilitarian informa- tion given is incidental, though, of course, it appears otherwise to the child and often to the child's parents. The main object of the study is to train to better mental grasp by developing the power of observation, the skilful use of the finer muscles of the hands, and by experience through practical lessons in cause and effect.
Turning for a moment to Canada, where, in the spring of 1904, a group of school gardens was established in each of the provinces of On- tario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward's Island, we encounter the work of Dr. James W. Robertson,* former Commis- sioner of Agriculture and Dairying and until lately director of the Macdonald Fund and President of Macdonald College at Ste. Anne de Bellevue. The Macdonald Fund for the establishment of the Macdonald schools throughout the eastern prov- inces, Macdonald Institute at Guelph, Canada, neighbor to the Ontario Agricultural College, and Macdonald College recently established at Ste. Anne de Bellevue in the province of Quebec, were
* Dr. Robertson is known as the "Agricultural Wizard of the North."
13
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
the gifts of Sir William C. Macdonald of Mont- real.
'The Macdonald movement "aims at helping the rural population to understand better what education is and what it aims at for them and their children." It deals on the one side with the im- provement of homes through its preparation of
Macdonald College, Ste. Anne de Bellevue. School Garden ON the "Group Plan"
teachers in domestic science and household art, and on the other with the betterment of rural home conditions through improvement of the school life and modification of the curriculum to meet the needs of rural districts. As a vital factor bearing upon the life of the community, and as pedagogically sound, it introduced in addi-
14
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
tion to manual training, the school garden, whose influence and worth had already been demon- strated at Toronto in the Broadview Gardens at- tached to the Boys' Brigade institute,* and on a larger scale by Dr. Mac- Kay, superintendent of education in the Nova Scotia schools. As early as 1904, Nova Scotia had some 79 gardens, and the maritime provinces have sent the greater number of teachers to Macdonald Institute for the spring and summer courses.
The Macdonald school gardens put in the back- ground European ideas of utility, whether eco- nomic or as preliminary to a scientific study of agriculture. Insisting that "nearly all such
* This Institute, under Captain Atkinson, is a self-governing club, carrying on evening classes; two joint stock corporations (one dealing in honey, one in maple syrup); and a garden on a township plan of control. The boys pay for their garden privilege. They make what they can from their produce, even being allowed to speculate by hiring some of their fellow farmers to work for them or by buying standing crops. This practice is guarded somewhat, and is defended on the ground that "such is life," where foresight, brains, industry, rightly count more than short-sighted contentment with being just a "hewer of wood" or unskilled tiller of land. Plots near the street are sold only to good gardeners. In ic)o8 one boy took $18 in prize money alone.
15
Section of a "Group" Gar- deniOneorTwo Children ON Each Vegetable Plot
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
gardens stop short with a certain amount of scientific information and the habit of careful observation," these Canadian gardens while "de- signed to encourage the cultivation of the soil as an ideal life work, intend to promote above all things else symmetrical education of the indi- vidual." Hence, in order that this attitude might
Macdonald Institute, Guelph, School Gardens, July, iqoq
be emphasized and the gardens become a factor in an educational movement, Dr. Robertson brought them under the Department of Education in each province rather than under the Department of Agriculture. Twenty-one school gardens were started and were maintained free of cost to either pupils or the public for three years. The various provinces passed Orders in Council incorporating
i6
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
them into their educational systems, thus placing the school gardens of Canada on a broader educa- tional basis than those of any other state or country.
3i63^»*^»^'»'^)"^4*f;«^ir4«:^»e3KJ^^
BowEsviLLE School Grounds, Canada
"The Macdonald school gardens not only have a recognized place in the provincial systems of education, but they are attached to the ordinary rural schools, owned by the school corporation,
17
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
and conducted under the authority of the school trustees and with the express approval of the rate payers. The work of the garden is recognized as a legitimate part of the school program and it is already interwoven with a considerable part of the other studies. The garden is becoming the outer classroom of the school, and its plots are its blackboards. The garden is not an innovation, or an excrescence, or an addendum, or a diversion. It is a happy field of expression, an organic part of the school in which the boys and girls work among growing things and grow themselves in body and mind and spiritual outlook."*
At the beginning of the movement, six teachers of experience in the rural schools were selected and sent, at the expense of the Macdonald fund, for special studies to the Ontario Agricultural Col- lege at Guelph and to Chicago, Cornell, Columbia and Clark universities. They were specially trained to supervise the work in each of the provinces.! The general plan was to have the gardens started in groups of five schools each, at distances of from seven to fifteen or more miles apart, and to have traveling instructors superin-
* Cowley, R. H.: The Macdonald School Gardens of Canada, Queen's Quarterly, p. 401.
t For the present requirements for teachers see Elementary Agriculture and Horticulture and School Gardens in Village and Rural Schools. Explanatory and Descriptive Circular No. 13, Sept. 1907, July, iQOQ, issued by Department of Education, Toronto, Canada. Also programs of Summer School for Teachers, issued by Macdonald Institute, Guelph. See Appendix A, Note 2.
18
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
tend the work of each group. By these means the value of the work became known to as many taxpayers as possible. To further this end, the gardens were open to inspection at all times and their pupils encouraged to try for prizes at the county fairs. "In many places the people have taken up the experiment with an openmindedness
Teachers' Class Visiting the Merden School Gardens, Canada
that has already carried it far on the way to success." Today, with the exception of Quebec, where a dual system of schools (Protestant and Catholic) exists, the Macdonald school gardens, some twenty-nine in number, are supported largely by the provinces. In Quebec and in a few in- stances elsewhere the Macdonald fund still offers assistance, though its chief work is to
19
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
support the two institutions for the suitable preparation of leaders and teachers in the "new education."
Among pioneer school gardens in the United States, one of the earliest, largest and most com- plete was that established in 1897 by the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio. The president of the company, after an investigation of the successes and failures of the men who had been boys with him, was impressed by the fact that there had been scarcely a failure among those boys who had been responsible for some farm or garden "chores." He decided that in a very rough neighborhood he would make the experiment of using the surplus energy of the boys in practical garden work and let them have the products of their steady work and business energy. So gratifying was the result that the garden is to- day a marked feature of the welfare work for the employes of the National Cash Register Company.*
About the same time, 1897- 1898, several normal schools in the east began to offer instruction in school gardening, notably Hyannis, Massachusetts, where, by means of the gardening lessons, banking and business operations were taught, as well as the correlation of garden work with arithmetic and
* The plots are lo x loo feet. They are for boys old and strong enough to garden on a scale sufficient, for example, to permit one boy to provide a family of five with fresh vegetables throughout the season, and make $5.00 in addition. The boys work under a competent gardener.
20
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
Other studies of the schoolroom. South Framing- ham, Massachusetts; Willimantic, Connecticut; Hampton, Virginia;* Johnson, Vermont, soon fell into line. In the west, the development of the garden in connection with rural and consolidated schools, was taken up with energy. f Salt Lake City, Utah; Silver Lake, New Mexico; Joliet, Illinois; Louisville, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; Menomonie, Wisconsin; and Los Angeles, Cal- ifornia, were among the pioneers. | The Normal School of Washington, D. C, introduced the work, and Congress finally made a small grant for gardens in the District of Columbia. By 1904, Circular 13, issued by the Department of Education of the state of Vermont, reported in all from fifteen to twenty normal schools and ten or twelve agri- cultural colleges throughout the country as dis- playing much interest and activity in the school
* The Whittier School is the practice school of the Institute. It is also a free public school. Probably no school garden in the country has had a greater influence than that of the Whittier School. It reaches about 300 of its own children and through the work of the normal department of Hampton, hundreds of teachers and thousands of children of the colored and Indian races.
t Supt. O. J. Kern's work in Winnebago County, 111., is especially noteworthy. See Annual Reports of the Winnebago County Schools and also his Among Country Schools, Ginn and Co., Boston, IQ06.
X This chapter confines itself to a brief mention of those cities or gardens where pioneer work was done and to an outline of its development up to the present time when there are too many towns and cities engaged in the work to enumerate them. Later in the book special references are made to some of the striking details in the work of different localities.
21
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
garden movement. Preparation was thus being made for putting school garden instruction on a pedagogical basis and preparing teachers for their work.
Since 1904, other institutions, such as New York University, Amherst Agricultural College, Storrs, the Chautauqua Assembly, have opened
Morgan School, Washington, D. C.
short summer courses for teachers, and in 1909 the University of Pennsylvania gave a course of four lectures, oifering as an object lesson to its summer students a school garden cultivated by the children of Philadelphia.* Both lectures and
* Already farmers' institutes of several states have officially endorsed the school garden; summer schools are offering courses for its advancement. The agricultural colleges of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
garden were conducted by the city supervisor of school gardens. Cornell in her Agricultural Col- lege offers helpful courses, and constantly seeks to arouse and sustain interest in the outdoor world and particularly in rural life, by means of her many bulletins. The Rural School Leaflets and Home Nature Study Course are widely distributed. In the central west, the Cleveland Home Garden- ing Association began its work in 1900 with the distribution of 48,868 penny packets of seeds. In the following year, it instituted a test garden in the center of the city. It has continued and greatly increased its work both with adults and with the school children under the direction of the able curator of school gardens. Miss Louise Klein Miller. The Cleveland board of education was the first to appreciate the value of school garden work and to create the office of curator. The curator is not on the educational staff but holds office under the administrative department and is responsible to the director of schools. The board places at the curator's disposal three laborers and in 1909 gave her an assistant teacher. While laying much stress on the nine school gardens connected with its schools and steadily enlarging their number, it particularly emphasizes school- others among the states are doing what they can in the way of training teachers. In iQog the Rhode Island College provided a traveling supervisor for the gardens already established in Provi- dence and Newport. Normal schools and colleges are also providing winter courses, giving the teachers either Saturday lectures or more extended courses through a part of the year's session.
23
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
ground decoration. The board encourages but does not enforce correlation of school garden work with routine studies.* It does not, in any grade, compel the children to work in the gardens. However, it conducts gardens through- out the year, and provides for informal in- struction by the curator, for lectures on garden- ing in the schools in the spring, and for flower shows in September and October. Co-operating with the Home Gardening Association of Cleve- land, the board approves the association's vacant lot work and its training garden, where boy farmers are taught simple truck farming.f To- gether, they encourage the children to purchase bulbs and seeds, to plant home gardens, and to take an interest in the flower shows and festivals at which prizes are offered by the association or its friends. In school ground decoration the children usually have some part, either in the planting, or care or both. Today, Cleveland has more than 50,000 home gardens due to the influence of the school garden and the efforts of the Home Gardening Association. The latter distributes seed packets and bulbs by the hundred thousands both in Cleveland and in outside territory. |
* The curator has worked out a system of correlation in arithmetic, geography, drawing and manual training which is optional.
t Plots in the training ground are 14 x 25 feet and 28 x 50 feet, in all about 65 plots, and are for boys from ten to fourteen years of age.
J Outside of Cleveland in IQ09, 421,611 seed packets were dis- tributed.
24
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The Home Gardening Association. SEEDS FOR 1908. Price One Cent a Packet. Mark opposite the variety the number of packets wanted. Separate Colors Cannot be Ordered. |
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FLOWER SEEDS. |
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Aster, mixed, Scarlet, White and Rose. 15 inches high. |
Morning Glory, a climber, mixed colors, 12 ft. high. |
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Bachelor's Button or Corn- flower, inixe<l, I'hie, Pink ;iii(l \\ bile, 2 fl. liigh. |
Nasturtium, a climber, mixed Yellow, Orange and Red, 6 ft. high. |
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China Pinks, mixed, Pink, Scarlet, White, and Lilac, 6 inches high. |
Petunia, Purple and White, I ft. high. |
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Calendula, Yellow and Orange, I ft. high. |
Phlox, mixed (annual), Scarlet, Pink and White, I ft. high. |
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Candytuft— mixed. White, Pink and Red. I ft. high. |
Portulaca, mixed colors, 4 inches high. |
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Four-O'clock, Yellow, White and Crim- son, 2 ft. high. |
Scabiosa, or Pincushion, mixed. Rid, Lilac and Pink, iVi ft. high. |
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Larkspur, Blue, White and Pink. 2 ft. high. |
Verbena, mixed. White, Scarlet, Purple, 6 inches high. |
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Marigold, French, Yellow and Brown, I ft. high. |
Zinnia, double, Scarlet, 2 ft. high. |
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VEGETABLE SEEDS. | |
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Beans, bush, 1 ft. high, Plant about May ist. |
Onions. I ft. high. Plant about April 15th. |
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Beets. 9 inches high. Plant about April 25th. |
Radishes. 6 inches high. Plant about April 15th. |
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Carrots. 6 inches high. Plant about May 15th. |
Spinach, 6 inches high. Plant about April 15th. |
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Lettuce. 9 inches high. Plant about April 15th. |
Sweet Corn, 6 ft. high. Plant about May xsth. |
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Return this envelope to the teacher, with your money. Do not put money in this envelope. No. of packets Amount cents. |
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School Grade No. of Room Your seeds will be delivered in this Envelope about April 15th. Prepare your garden early in April. Select the sunniest part of your yard, but avoid a place where the drippings from the roof will fall on the bed. Dig deep— a full foot— and break up the lumps. Soil with well-rotted manure dug in will give better results than poor soil. Vegetables require good, rich soil. |
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
In New England the pioneer work of establish- ing school gardens was, as has been said, begun under the influence of the Massachusetts Horticul- tural Society; and a little later the Massachu- setts Civic League, the Woman's Auxiliary of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association, the Twentieth Century Club and the Normal
School of Horticulture, Hartford, Conn.
School of Boston as well as other clubs, schools and village improvement societies throughout the state, took up the work.
In Connecticut, the Rev. Dr. Francis Goodwin in 1900 founded the Hartford School of Horti- culture. The enterprise of the Women's Civic Club of that city, shortly after, started a garden
26
Bovs' Plots, School of Horticulture
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
in the public park, which has now been taken over by the board of school visitors as one of the several gardens main- tained by them. Dr. Goodwin founded the School of Horti- culture to give opportunity for individual work and graded train- ing to the boys
of the Watkinson Farm School of which he was a trustee. Under Mr. Herbert Hemenway the work
of the School of Horticulture was broadened to in- clude city boys and girls, teach- ers' classes, and gardens for adult men and women who wished to cul- tivate a plot un- der expert super- vision or advice. Recently, under the present direc- tor, Mr. Stanley H. Rood, lecture courses have also
27
A Teacher's Garden, School of Horticulture
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
been given to teachers by experts upon such practical problems as soils and their treatment, and other agricultural topics.
Another pioneer garden serving as a model for the peculiar needs of congested districts in large cities, is that of DeWitt Clinton Park School Farm of New York, originated and started in 1901
DeWitt Clinton Park School Garden, New York City
by Mrs. Henry Parsons. It has given inspira- tion to many people to start other gardens upon similar lines. Its work was exhibited on a small scale at both the St. Louis and Jamestown Ex- positions. On little 4x8 foot plots by a system of two plantings, one in May and one in July, it takes some thousand children off the city streets, furnishes nature study material to schools and vis-
28
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
iting classes, and gives to a number of crippled children brought there each week, some happy hours working over their little farms, or superin- tending such work when it must be done by stronger arms. The School Farm, with its flowers, its regu- lar lines of vegetables, its grains and observation plots, presents an almost park-like appearance to the neighborhood.
The earlier work of Philadelphia with its con- stantly increasing number of school gardens, the work in Washington, D. C, and the successful Fairview Garden School of Yonkers, New York, should be mentioned among the pioneers.
Philadelphia stands out today as the city whose board of education most fully recognizes, from the pedagogical and educational standpoint, the value of the school garden. It appoints a su- pervisor of school gardens (Miss Stella Nathan) ; incorporates the work into its school system in cer- tain grades, and maintains the gardens throughout the growing season. The teaching in the gardens, therefore, follows a prescribed course, yet loses none of its joyous, vital interest to the children. This instruction is correlated in the school room work "from the kindergarten to the senior class of the normal school." Philadelphia now has 8 school gardens, accommodating from 150 to 200 children each, 22 kindergarten and 1764 home gardens. It is intended in the coming year that these last shall be regularly supervised by one of the staff of gardening instructors in the
29
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
neighborhood where they are located. The de- tails of this work as well as that of Cleveland will be taken up later. These two cities are foremost in demonstrating the value of the school garden and in honoring it by placing their respective cura- tor and supervisor in high official positions, with suitable appropriations for their work.
In the United States school gardens are spread- ing rapidly, and the work is becoming more and more recognized as worthy of a place in local educational systems. At the national capital, the District of Columbia, limited by the terms of the Congressional appropriation of $1200 for school gardens, which forbid the use of the money for salaries, does the next best thing and appoints Miss Susan B. Sipe, one of the teachers in the Normal School, at a nominal salary, as supervisor of nature study and school gardens in the District of Columbia. A course in nature study has been prepared defining the work from grade to grade and so systematized that each child has a "required amount of work in the school garden just as he has in arithmetic, reading, etc." Washington has four large school gardens on vacant lots, and for school-ground decoration Miss Sipe counts 100 white and 50 colored schools in all but 3 of which the children have some part in the planting and care. Moreover, as empha- sizing the value of her work, the United States Department of Agriculture has made her a colla- borator in the Bureau of Plant Industry and fur-
30
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
nished her with a greenhouse for the instruc- tion of normal students in school garden teach- ing. These pupils are required to conduct home gardens under supervision. The Bureau of Plant Industry, together with the Office of Experi- ment Stations, works with the schools, furnish-
CoRNER OF Ludlow Schoolyard, Washington, D. C.
ing the supervisor with plants, seeds and other material.
Nor does the United States government stop here in its furtherance of the movement. It has published a large number of bulletins on school gardens and allied topics which may be had by application to the Secretary of Agriculture. The
31
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Bureau of Plant Industry furnishes a large amount of seeds in answer to "school requests," which latter have steadily increased in number since 1904, and now come from every state in the Union, mounting into the thousands.* These seeds are put up in four sets; namely, flowers, vegetables, decorative and economic. Each of the first two sets contains five packets of differ- ent kinds of seed. The decorative set contains ten and the economic eighteen packets, with enough of each kind to plant a square rod of ground. Three of the most important Farmers' Bulletins are No. 195, Annual Flowering Plants; No. 218, The School Garden; and No. 134, Tree Planting on Rural School Grounds. One of great interest. No. 204, Gardening and Nature Study in English Schools, Office of Experiment Stations, has been referred to.
The school requests indicate a widespread interest in garden work for children. As yet one may readily count the number of gardens that have risen into prominence because of their excep- tionally fine work. There are, however, with and
* In 1908, 1400 requests for seeds came from approximately 4200 schools and ranged from one order of each set of flower and vegetable seeds to sometimes as many as 300 of these, and usually included decorative and economic sets. The economic set includes grasses, cereals, forage and fibre plants so that the children may become familiar with staple crops grown elsewhere than in their own locality. There was enough of each kind of seed to plant a square rod of ground. Requests for from 50 to 100 sets were not uncommon.
32
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
without government help, hundreds of school gar- dens cultivated by from 20 to 200 children each, in scattered towns and cities from Maine to Virginia, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, that are quietly doing good work the excellence of which in many cases has not come to public notice. In the south and middle west and in the far coast
Second Grade Children Making Cuttings. Washington, D. C.
Normal School,
states, in territory with which the writer is not personally familiar, there are thousands of tenta- tive attempts to utilize this new factor in educa- tion.
As a rule, the normal schools have been the first to endorse the school garden and to try out its value, while boards of education have viewed
33
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
it as a new thing requiring it to prove its educa- tional and social worth. Frequently they give it a meagre support, recognizing it perhaps by the appointment of a nature study teacher as a super- visor of school gardens, but granting little or no money toward either the maintenance of the garden or a reasonable salary to cover the summer's work of supervision. Sometimes this lack of support is due to a division of opinion among the school com- missioners or among members of the boards of estimate. It may meet the opposition of the older and more conservative principals of the city, or of a ward politician who sees no sense in it and is afraid that the voters will look upon it as a new fad or a new excuse for increasing taxes.
Generally, the school garden idea has captured the educational leaders in our country, made friends for itself among the most progressive of our teachers, old and new, and won the children wherever it has been tried. One drawback to its rapid growth is that there is still confusion be- cause of the stress that has been laid sometimes upon theoretical views; or upon its peculiar fitness to meet the special needs of particular places. These lesser questions can be safely left to settle themselves, for a school garden is like a bank in that it may be drawn upon for values of different kinds to meet different needs, as one may require money in the form of gold or silver, check or draft. In a school garden the educational, economic, aesthetic, utilitarian, or sociological value may be
34
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
made most prominent, according to circumstances. Its power for developing a child's nature should not be confined to only one of these viewpoints; neither should it be considered appropriate to one stratum of society or to a few classes of children only. It may ease the condition of the poor and bring profit and pleasure to their children. To the children of the rich and well to do it will give pleasure, and should teach some needed lessons in
Macdonald Consolidated School and Gardens, Guelph
personal responsibility and in the consequences of broken laws from which it is human nature to think that one may escape.
So long as the educational value of school gardens is not fully recognized by local school boards, just so long will they be dependent for their support upon philanthropic societies or upon the good will of private individuals, and be subject to the discouragement of loose tenure and shift of locality as land values rise. Until very recently
35
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
those interested in agriculture or horticulture or in attempts to benefit social conditions have been most active in establishing them.* It is interest- ing to note how many gardens like those at Yonkers, at Pittsburgh, at Dubuque and, in part, at Cleveland, have developed into social centers. Among educators, friends of the school garden are multiplying rapidly, and increasing numbers believe "that instruction such as is given in the school garden is of the right kind. It arouses interest in real things; it develops judgment; it brings the child in contact with his envi- ronment, and above all, it gives that opportunity for placing responsibility on the child without which character is not developed. The activi- ties of school garden work are natural to the child and give much needed respite from school-room restraint. . . . The child's mind gets growth out of them because it can understand them. Not only does the school garden serve to edu- cate and train, but it supplies a kind of knowledge
* The National Plant, Flower and Fruit Guild encourages school gardens and through its local branches assists in starting them.
The International School Farm League seeks to develop the school garden in connection with schools, parks, institutions and day camps, as an educational, recreational, sociological, and remedial agency.
The Gardening Association of America, organized October, 1909, in Buffalo, gives equal emphasis to vacant lot and school gardening and will encourage both because of their tendency to benefit the poor, to show the power of self-help, to further agricultural interests, to lessen the evil influences of city life and to cultivate a love of growing plants.
36
z
UJ
Q Qi <
a
_i o o
u
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL GARDEN
that is highly useful and cultivates a taste for an honorable and remunerative vocation."*
Perhaps best of all is that teaching of the saner and sweeter side of life which comes when the school garden takes the child off the city streets, away from crowded alleys, vicious surroundings, and, in the country, often from misspent leisure; when it finds happy work for idle hands, health for enfeebled bodies, and training for the will and affec- tions. If you doubt the last service, watch the child's love for the flowers and vegetables he has made to grow, and the affectionate pride of his parents in the success of his garden. Sometimes a selfish interest in what the child can provide for the family table has brought him more considera- tion and developed greater gentleness and co- operation in the family life. It has proved just as well to "stand in" with the little farmer who can provide otherwise unattainable delicacies of fresh vegetables, salads and soup materials.
All these things make any kind of a garden worth while, and, if we utilize the interest in it to freshen the wearisome tasks of the school- room, there is an added value. The dullest child will brighten as he or she lays out the little plot, figures out the crops, or calculates the gains. The telling of a story with innocent and pleasur- able self interest as the pivotal point, opens a way into an easier and better land of composition than was dreamed of before; while history and geog-
*SpilIman, W. J.: Significance of the School Garden Movement 37
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
raphy, textiles, food and clothing have surprising relations to a garden which an occasional apt reference or illustration can bring out. More and more it is being made the partner of physical geography. In every school it should be the twin of nature study and usually the companion of manual training. It is easy to show how much we owe to the husbandman; how the life of the whole round world is inter-dependent, or in a child's phraseology, "hangs together"; how tilling of the soil is a fundamental necessity. No child who has ever loved a garden will despise the farmer, for he has learned by experience to respect manual labor; and that brains and hands must work together to bring good crops.
38
CHAPTER II
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
CHAPTER II
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
"Why should you give your pupils the benefit of a school garden? Because it brings Hving principles home to the children, and school is living — not a preparation for life. Because it enables the children to solve for themselves, under the law of necessity, some of the most difficult problems which the school course has to offer. . . Because the garden supplies ideal conditions for cultivating the hand and the heart as well as the head." — S. T. Palmer.
" In town schools the best plan is to begin with the school garden and emphasize the jesthetic side; then work out to beautify the city, and on this basis work out to the great typical processes of agriculture. In rural schools, the most successful agricultural in- struction is that which begins with the agricultural activities of the local environment, and which finds in these activities certain problems which then become subjects of investigation, and even experiment in a school garden." — B. M. Davis.
SCHOOL gardens may be regarded from several points of view and cultivated with one or more of several aims in mind so far as the immediate or future good of the child is concerned. But whatever the special purpose, there should be kept in mind the far reaching in- fluences that will pervade a neighborhood when a successful school garden so inspires the children and parents that little gardens in home yard or window box spring up as restful, cheerful bits of 4 41
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
color. These are a bond of sympathy and pleasure among the poor, the well to do and the wealthy. There is no hobby that may be so inexpensive; no subject of conversation less likely to become dis- agreeably personal; no topic offering better oppor- tunities of give and take in the matter of experience
Could You Do Better?
than that of flowers. So it follows that a love of flowers tends to level class distinctions; to give openings for real friendliness based upon mutual interests among people whose business and en- vironment may be vastly different. Moreover, the individual betterment that comes from any worthy hobby follows in the wake of flower culture.
42
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
Considering school gardens from the point of view of maintenance, including organization and purpose, they may be divided into four classes: (i) those maintained by individuals, corporations, clubs, philanthropic organizations, playground associations, civic clubs and village improvement societies; (2) gardens supported by and under the control of park commissioners or city recreation bureaus* or boards of public works; (3) those maintained by school commissioners, trustees, or boards of education, in connection with schools, whether as experiments, as features of vacation schools, or as accepted and valuable parts of the school system for which distinct appropriation is made. A fourth class might include many exist- ing gardens where the experiment is maintained by a combination of any two of the above named agencies, as when land is furnished by school board or park commissioners, and means for equipment are supplied by club or private subscription.
In the matter of organization, park or school boards usually appoint the head and assistant teachers of gardens under municipal control. Where a club supports a garden, a committee of ways and means is chosen to select the head teacher, to whom is turned over the entire re- sponsibility of running the garden. In either case, reasonable consideration should be shown
* St. Louis Park Department Public Recreation Commission supports its children's gardens.
43
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
the head-worker in the garden, and deference paid to her knowledge of the most desirable type of assistant (training and personality considered) that the particular garden requires.
One city selects assistants from such of its regular elementary grade teachers as are en- rolled upon the eligible list. It employs them in groups of two or more to serve in the gardens either in the afternoon or forenoon for five days each week from July to September and pays them $12 per week. The gardens are also open for work after school hours and on Saturdays in June and September. No insect study or other allied work with garden material is required; the lessons are confined to elementary gardening. The teachers must have had at least one season under experienced supervision in growing the crops that the children will raise. These gardens have a floral border filled by the overflow from the city's park supply but with room enough left for the children to grow a few plants as their contribu- tion to the beauty of the whole. The individual plots or farms stand for individual care and rights, — even to the right of carelessness as an instructive example. The border demands of the little citizen his or her share of responsibility for the commu- nity's standard of order, beauty and co-operation.
In cities where there are a large number of gardens, often of various types, an inspector, supervisor or curator of gardens is appointed, with assistants in each garden to carry out plans
44
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
and instructions. Such assistants may be grade or special teachers, janitors, gardeners, or even some of the more capable children who are selected to have an oversight over their mates and feel highly honored by the titles of section leader, tool keeper, head gardener, monitor, or even constable, and are held responsible for the orderly behavior as well as for the work of their charges. The following report gives an illustration of active co-operation by the children in the supervision of the garden work.
Secretary's Report
Minneapolis, Minn. April 20, 1909 To the Honorable Members of B Room:
Pierce School. 1 have the honor to transmit the following report.
The B Room held its first business meeting on tuesday April 20, 1909 at 9: a. m. Our principal, Mrs. Mary D. La Rue presided over the meeting, and the following ofificers were elected by ballots.
Henry Johnson was elected superintendent of the garden. To assist him, the following eight section superintendents were chosen; Blanche Uptergrove, Lewin Olsen, Clarence Hansen, Mary Falconer, Bennie Anderson, Henry Johnson, Helmer Hammer, William Uptergrove and Abner Anderson. Ruth McDonald was elected Treasurer. Mildred Formoe was elected Secretary. Special work was given to each officer, who has the power to [choose] the helpers that he may need.
Respectfully Submitted Mildred Formoe
Secretary Age 12 years. B 6 Pierce
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
In very many cases, the assistants are regular teachers who volunteer during the spring term for the extra hours of work in their desire to hasten the day when the school garden shall become an established feature of their school. Where a garden is part of a school a principal will often supervise the work and arrange that each grade teacher shall have time to take her children to the garden for an hour or so in the course of each week; while, if the garden is carried through the summer, a school teacher (sometimes the principal) is hired for the vacation period. Some- times the garden may be cared for during the summer by the janitor or by a committee of the children who remain in town.
Turning to the kinds of gardens considered according to environment and purpose, and fol- lowing the analogy of flowers, they may be divided into two orders with several varieties in each; namely, (I) The urban or city school garden, answering to the needs of towns and cities, and (II) the suburban or rural, answering to the needs of small villages and country districts, the two classes being subdivided according to the particu- lar object in mind in the laying out of each. For instance, gardens aiming especially at school- ground decoration would occur in both main divisions in connection with both city and rural schools. And again, gardens for experimental purposes, designed to make clear the use of fertilizers, the development or deterioration of
46
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
crops, and like work, would have a place under rural school gardens and also, to some extent, in almost any well-conducted city garden. The growing of vegetables or flowers or of both as the child's very own property would enter into nearly all varieties of gardens; consequently, this sim- plest and most frequent form of school gardening may be taken as a "fundamental type," just as there is at the other end of the scale the rarely attained and, at first, seemingly costly ideal, a "model school garden." The latter is not costly, however, if measured by effectiveness of results, and the education that can be accomplished through it.
The ideal school garden includes the formal or ornamental garden that should be the setting of every model school building; large and separate playgrounds for boys and girls, with screened and vine-covered outbuildings, where necessary; a large garden, having individual and co-operative flower and vegetable plots, also some for obser- vation or experiment ("sample plots," they are frequently called), and larger areas for forestry, grapery, nursery and the growing of small fruits. There should be hot and cold frames for forcing, and a small greenhouse. Most important of all, there should be a controllable water supply and, if possible, a basin or pond for aquatic life. An equipment of tools and a toolhouse are necessary, and an arbor should be provided which may also be used as an outdoor lecture room or for shelter
47
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
from sudden showers. Sun dial, weather vane and rain gauge, together with barometer and thermometer for daily observations should be at hand. To be complete, the model garden should have a suitable place for storing fertilizers, seeds and garden requisites, and even a small suite of household rooms with lecture room and laboratory for carrying on the home laboratory
i^^^sEsm^^
Housekeeping Room, DeWitt Clinton Park, New York City
and lecture work for which the garden furnishes both material and opportunity.*
This may be ideal and rarely attainable at the start. It is often better to work up to this com-
* DeWitt Clinton Park School Farm Garden has such a suite of rooms, including those for tools and for laboratory work, in the basement of the pergola that bounds the garden on the Hudson River side. In these, elementary lessons in housewifery as well as in agriculture are conducted.
48
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
plete garden; to have it built up gradually by the children and their interested associates and older friends. Yet in cities where there is a system of gardens it is well to have one such as a model of attainment.
At the present time there are, as has been said, school gardens of many varying kinds carried on for different immediate ends though with the one underlying and universal purpose of helping the children to an all round development. Some of these gardens will be briefly sketched. It is probably true that the mental picture which the term "school garden" most frequently calls up is that of a plot of ground laid out in small individual beds where the common vegetables, together with one or two varieties of flowers, are grown; and larger areas for flowers and observation, or sample plots, on which are grown various plants including the common troublesome garden weeds. In such a garden the children may learn the joy of individual ownership and of co-operative or group work as well. They will at the same time, through sharing in the work on the larger plots, become familiar with a wider range of plant life than that which could be grown on their own small plots. Such a mental picture may have for its setting the congested quarter of a great city, a bit of a public park or playground, a part of town or village schoolyard, or it may be an isolated vacant lot transformed.
To know how to plan, to care for and conduct 49
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
such a garden requires the fundamental knowl- edge necessary to success in carrying on any kind of a school garden. For this reason, and because it is more likely to be the sort of garden attempted in any locality as an initial experiment, it is here taken as the basic type, and to it and the work
"Little Bkuihhk Helps"
that may be centered in it, the greater number of the following chapters are devoted. One may find such gardens in the east and south, in our middle and western states, in Canada and in the West In- dies, though in the last the nature of the crops will vary considerably from the uniformity common on the continent. Its plots may be tiny or big, its
50
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
equipment small or large, the scope of its work nar- row or wide, its quality and quantity graded or un- graded; but as far as it goes, its teaching and ex- perience are fundamental, whether for teacher or child. So to this "fundamental type" we give par excellence the name " school garden," because in the mind of psychologist, educator and teacher, it is a school in which to cultivate, to develop children quite as much as or more than to teach them how to grow flowers or to mature vegetables.
This fundamental type offers the largest cultural development for children in the smallest area. It demands of the teacher either little or much train- ing, according to the scope of work carried on in it. Nowhere is less previous experience required ex- cept in the tiny posy garden or where, as in some formal gardens, the work of teacher and children is confined to a very small amount of supervised planting, whether of bulbs or seeds, and to the necessary later care in watering and in keeping the soil loose. From the likeness of much of the work in the "fundamental type" to truck gardening, and from the children's delight in being known as little farmers owning their small farms, this basic type might be called not only the "school garden," but the "school garden farm."*
* This term would be equally applicable to the usual school garden in cities and to the extensive school garden tract of five acres or more which Minnesota requires under the Putnam Bill, or to such gardens of lesser area, as would be advisable in our agricultural states. The difference in size would be suggested by the locality mentioned or by the context in which the term occurred.
51
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
School gardens might then be divided into
[. Urban or City Gardens, including
1. The school garden farm (the one usually adopted
for congested districts).
2. The garden for school-ground decoration.
3. Gardens for special purposes; such as
a. The domestic science or kitchen garden.
b. Gardens for germination or forcing
purposes.
c. Gardens for nursery or forestry purposes.
d. Botanical gardens laid out from the
standpoint of
(i) Plant families. (2) Commercial or home eco- nomics.
e. Exchange gardens as clearing houses for
surplus plants.
f. Training gardens or those of considerable
size where stress is particularly laid on large individual plots and the training of their owners to truck farming, even on a commercial scale.
g. Gardens for defective or delinquent
children, h. Gardens for other specialized aims, whatever they may be; as, for ex- ample, for growing material to illustrate special subjects, or for children in the kindergarten, etc.
. Suburban or Rural Gardens.
1 . The school garden farm.
2. Gardens for school-ground decoration.
52
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
3. Trial gardens or gardens for experimental work
with plants or crops. (These are often coupled with No. i.)
4. "Topographical" or chart gardens, leading di-
rectly to a wild flower garden or to school- ground decoration or to the school garden farm.
The classification into "group" and "individ- ual" gardens is not given here because by far the greater number of gardens in some measure com- bine the two, and because the term is a distinction in method of work rather than in character of gardens.
It is a far cry from the complete outfit of the ideal garden to taking up the pavement in a school yard and making 2x2 foot beds for tiny farms. But, as one cannot expect completeness, so one may hope to avoid such impoverishment as the 2x2 foot plots would imply. If you cannot do any better, begin with the 2x2 foot bed and comfort yourself with the thought of the lesser sum of money needed and the probability that the question of soil will resolve itself into buying a few bushels or at most a few loads of good garden soil, such as would be necessary in the case of a roof garden.* In cities, parts, so to speak, of the ideal garden may be scattered judiciously among the various schools, in their yards or on nearby vacant lots. For instance, one school may have only the garden
* A load of earth or gravel is one cubic yard, estimated at 150 shovelfuls.
53
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
for school-ground decoration, very likely of the formal sort. Here, where plant lines must har- monize with architectural lines and a color scheme of continual bloom be carried out, the training of a landscape gardener, or the advice of an ex- pert, is necessary. But if the outline of such a
Vacant Lot in Louisville. The First Planting
garden be prepared, the teacher can follow it; the children can help in cultivating the hedges, trees and flowers. The garden becomes an object lesson and pleasure to the neighborhood and of permanent and increasing value to the school. To the children, it will be a means of development in more than one direction.
54
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
A pretty story is told in connection with the formal garden* of the Watterson School, Cleveland, Ohio. At the third clipping of the privet hedge, the cuttings were taken into the schoolroom and the children were asked if they
[■Vacant Lot in Louisville (see opposite page) After Several Seasons' Planting
cared enough for their hedge to think that other
* The formal decoration follows the vertical and horizontal lines of ornament and the color scheme of the school building; vines are planted only in the deep angles of the building with the intent to so train them as to make a solid band of green about the base of the building up to the first horizontal lines of white stone trimming. Stifif plants and trees of upright growth carry out the vertical lines while the red and white in the building is repeated in the tan covered playground and in the continuous bloom of pink and white flowers.
55
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
children in a distant school building would also like to own one. They were quite sure that a hedge like theirs would be much appreciated. The curator of the school gardens then explained that if the Watterson children were willing, besides giving the cuttings, to do a little work for those distant schoolmates, the latter could have a hedge. They cheerfully agreed to help. For busy work, they stripped the leaves. Then, they gathered the cuttings into groups of twos and threes, of fives and tens, and then into fifties. These large bundles were sent to another school where the children would lend their cold frames to "bank" or house the cuttings during the winter and to give them an early start so that the new hedge would be ready as soon as possible to make rapid and sturdy growth. Some of the children in the Watterson school were given the stripped leaves, with which they were told to lay out on their desks designs of any shape. Later, there was a little nature study talk upon the con- struction of the leaf and how it serves the parent plant, and attention was called to the difference in color of the upper and under sides. The children were asked to remake their designs using the two shades for color effect. They were promised that they would be shown how the young plants had lain dormant through the winter and how they started into life in the early spring, and were told that they could visit the other school to see the hedge which they had prepared for its boys and girls.
56
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
The Story suggests gardens for special purposes; as for preparation for truck farming ("training gardens"); for exchange of plants; for forcing; for nursery or forestry purposes; or the kitchen garden which might be attached t6 a school where the cooking courses were particularly good. In connection with any of these gardens, there might be a few flowers or a floral border so that the work could be partly individual, partly co-operative. In the kitchen garden there could be in addition, observation plots showing sweet herbs, grains, flax, hemp and cotton, or the raw products necessary for the commonest household tasks. Observation plots on a large numerical scale are necessary in botanical gardens laid out to show the classifica- tion of plants by families or according to their in- dustrial or commercial uses. Here again, plots can be apportioned to individual children, and special cultural directions may be given to each when necessary. The exchange garden above re- ferred to is carried on perhaps as much for the benefit of the parents as for the little ones. It is a central garden to which men, women and children can bring their extra or duplicate plants and exchange them for those of which others had a surplus. In Cleveland such a garden made in one year 20,000 exchanges. That means not only a good deal of pleasure, but much return for little money.
No city offers better opportunity to study the various kinds of gardens than Cleveland with its 5 57
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
nine school gardens and the stress it lays upon school-ground decoration. Miss Miller, in the Watterson and the new Technical High Schools, gives two excellent examples of formal planting, and about many of the older school buildings, some of which present rather hard propositions for the gardener, there are good decorative effects. Of the nine gardens, Rosedale* alone approaches com- pleteness. Among the others, for lack of space, different kinds of gardening are divided. In addi- tion, Cleveland has gardens on vacant lots and one, the Training Garden, conducted by the Home Gardening Association. At present, the work in the last named is divided between the junior and senior boys. It is, however, the intention of the association to develop a graded course of three or four years, so that a boy may here or on a farm, which will later be connected with the garden, learn enough agriculture to earn his living as a truck gardener or be inspired to fmd his way to an agri- cultural college, if he wishes to study general or special farming. Already the association and its friends have rewarded one boy by a scholarship at the Wooster State Agricultural College and expect to appoint him assistant in the Training Garden because being city born and bred yet trained in agriculture, he can attract and teach city boys effectively.
A celebrated physician and neurologist tells us that exercise of the muscles is absolutely necessary
* See Appendix A, Note 3. 58
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
to develop a healthy brain, to prevent imbecility, "for all thought has a motor side or element."* It is upon this demonstrated proposition that the educational value of manual training is based. It cannot be too often repeated that the brain should be trained in childhood not only by intel- lectual processes but by the development of the smaller muscles, especially those of the hands, by the constant requisition upon sensory and motor nerves, and by the constant quickening of sense perception. The result is intellectual power. It is psychologically sound, then, to propose hand training for those mentally deficient, provided that what is proposed is within the grasp of their low mentality.
With some imbecile children tools might be dangerous to themselves or to their fellows; with those less mentally deficient, the simplest forms of manual training may be undertaken provided they require only such amount of thought or work as shall gently and gradually stimulate the brain. Simple garden work, varied in require- ments from cleaning up paths, picking flowers for bouquets or spent blossoms lest they go to seed, and tasks as simple, up through the scale to more exact or difficult duties, offers hand training and gives pleasurable hours of work which may be divided into periods suited to the individual strength and fitful moods of the feeble minded. Thus in schools where the mentally deficient are
* Sir James Crichton-Brown. 59
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
segregated, the school garden may supply the place of manual training. Its plants must be hardy and of simple culture, and its system and method of work very elastic. Moreover, its pro- ducts will fit in at the noon luncheon which such schools frequently provide, for the children can
Copyright, IQOQ, Uiider-uvod &^ Underwood
Crippled Children Farming in the Heart of New York City
supply soup greens and salads, and brighten both table and schoolroom with their flowers. The garden work will provide health-giving physical exercise out of doors that can be regulated to individual needs.
To still another class of children largely cut 60
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
off from normal living, the school garden comes as a boon. In one large city, a certain number of plots were divided off for a group of deaf and dumb boys from a public institution. These lads, from twelve to fourteen years of age, were given plots I o X 45 feet. They cultivated the same crops as boys who had worked one or two years and had risen to the second and third grades in the garden work. The asylum boys took their instructions from the blackboard, found their tools by number in the toolhouse, and went about their work in happy silence. An occasional gesture or simple demonstration from the monitor who supervised their section was all they needed. Their beds presented a higher average in appearance than those of any other class. The class for cripples, at DeWitt Clinton Park, New York, has already been alluded to.
Here also may be mentioned gardens maintained in connection with detention schools, or homes for morally delinquent children. In the former, the garden must be conducted on very simple lines, because the children stay for short periods only. Sometimes there is a long period of waiting for suitable conveyance to the home or prison to which they have been sentenced. During this time the boys can cultivate the- garden. Those who have had such an opportunity seem to enjoy the work and are loath to leave it. One small boy, so repeatedly up for punishment that it was known his sentence would be severe, made such a decided
6i
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
improvement in manners and showed so strong a love for the garden work, that, as he was about to be taken to court, his teacher slipped into his hand a bit of paper and bade him give it to the judge. It read "This is my best digger," and bore the teacher's signature. The judge upon weigh- ing its mute appeal sentenced the boy, not to the reformatory among all sorts of criminals, but to a farm for refractory boys, where the environment was better and safer than his own home. When last heard from he was a happy, contented little fellow striving to deserve the opportunity to live and work upon a big farm. It was Dr. Hodge of Clark University, I think, who once said that the quickest way he knew to keep our prisons and reformatories empty was to give every boy a piece of ground, however small, to cultivate for ten years of his boyhood. Last summer, in Provi- dence, an incorrigible truant had one of the prize gardens.
Under gardens for special purposes, one might mention those in connection with day camps for tuberculous children, such as the one conducted during the summer of 1909 in connection with Bellevue Hospital, New York. Each day some fifty children were gathered there on the floating hospital boat moored to the dock, with a gangway crossing to that part of the hospital yard which formerly held the dump heap. Thanks to the interest of the International School Farm League, the Woman's Auxiliary of the hospital, and the
62
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
authorities of the latter, who gave the use of the ground, a school garden was laid out with some fifty little 4x8 beds for vegetables and flowers, and space for more flowers in the borders. Under the guidance of a skilful teacher, who had been trained in the DeWitt Clinton Park garden, the
( '••f'vn'qJit, IQOQ, by Uitdrncood &= U nderwood
Garden at Bellevue Hospital, New York City
children were allowed to cultivate their plots from half an hour to an hour each day according to their strength. With such occupation the hours lost some of their monotony, were happier, and brought better health and more resources and pleasures, not only for the present but for future days. As in the city, school gardens of difi'erent kinds 63
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
may be separated or may overlap, or be found represented in a large model garden, so, in rural districts, there may be combination or singleness of plan. The school garden farm emphatically has its place in manufacturing towns, in many villages, and in distinctly rural communities. In the country school, except for the work of the youngest children, the school farm of the city will undergo modifications in order to adapt it to the practical needs of a farming community. These modifications will be treated under the discussion of experimentation or trial gardens.
In the country, school-ground decoration will not be of the formal kind frequent in cities. Where the schoolhouse is situated on the roadside, the garden should aim to become a part of the land- scape, and the main lines should take their em- phasis from the natural contour of the land and its salient features. Whenever the school is in a village or in the open country, the decorative scheme of the yard through which the building is approached should be founded upon the ABC of landscape gardening; it should avoid a spotty appearance by,
A. Keeping lawn centers open, hence restful.
B. Planting in masses so as to get large effects;
and by careful arrangement of foreground and of color and texture of foliage, and avoiding "legginess" or bare, scraggly trunks and stems, securing tones of deep- 64
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
ening color and harmonious blending in shape, size and texture of leafage. C. Avoiding straight Hues which have no place except in formal gardening. Curves in paths and roadways should seem to have a reason for some bend, though it be only a group of bushes or a tree. Sometimes the easiest and most tactful way to secure a school garden in a remote community is to begin with a topographical or chart garden; that is, one based on exploration of the surround- ing country. Such would naturally lead up to interest in a wild flower garden and to the decora- tion of the school grounds. Where the school- house is an ugly building on a small, unsightly lot, and where farmers have no use for "fads," the topographical garden may be the only one possible. It may be well, therefore, to make very clear what is meant, especially as through such means a very conservative community may sometimes be led to take a lively interest not only in improving the school premises, but in permitting an experiment in vegetable gardening, which later may prove a boon to both adults and children.
Most children are glad to tell you where a unique tree, a noticeable bush, or rare flower is to be found. With the schoolhouse as a starting point, map out the way to find it. Gradually enlarge the drawing to indicate the contour of the land as the children describe road, hill, swamp or plain. Mark upon it the noticeable trees or
65
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
houses or even big rocks or boulders. Later fill in the map so as to suggest the kinds of growth in the bordering woods or meadows, first the larger sorts and then the smaller, gathering as you chart them topics for talks to which a part of one day each week may be given. At these times, the teacher should help the children sort out the knowledge which each has contributed and should amplify and intensify it for all. Some of the children will fetch specimens. With a little en- couragement, they will be willing to bring enough earth, if necessary, to start a wild flower garden, like the one at the George Putnam school pre- viously mentioned as the first in America, or the 10 X loo foot strip of wild flower garden at the Cobbett School, Lynn, Mass., where several hundred shrubs, woody vines, ferns and herbs are gathered. " From hepatica and bloodroot to aster and witch hazel they flourish in their season." Some of the rarer plants were brought or sent from central New York, from New Hamp- shire and from distant parts of Massachusetts.
However, one need not in any rural district go far to find suitable material for fern or wild flower border, for shrubbery or for trees fit to be transplanted. There are few plants that, like the arbutus and fringed gentian, rebel at civiliza- tion, and many that increase in size and bril- liancy under cultivation. That they are hardy and persistent when once rooted, twenty years' experience in gardening in a city back yard
66
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
has proved.* Dutchman's breeches (dicentra), hepatica, spring beauty, anemone, jack-in-the- pulpit, columbine, adder's tongue, asters, golden rod, violets of several kinds, the rose marsh- mallow and the wild sunflower all bear trans- planting and cultivation. Raspberry vines and blackberry bushes can be utilized for the garden as well as wild grape, woodbine or Virginia
Rock Garden, Audubon School, Dubuque, Iowa
creeper, bittersweet, clematis, and some of the other native vines. The hobble bush has beauty of blossom and leafage. Thorn apple, flowering dogwood, the elders, wild barberry and bob sumac provide good shrubbery and several of
* Many of the early spring plants were given warm and sunny places in winter and early spring, and sheltered by the dense shade of grape vines in the summer and early fall.
67
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
them furnish rich color and effective outhnes in the fall and winter. The mountain ash and the white birch are treasures, and many a seedling elm, oak or maple is easily found.
In some way establish a bond of interest between the school and the home growing of flowers. Start a plant or two in the schoolroom window.* One teacher in a rural school began his flower garden with a single fuchsia and in two or three years had a large family of plants includ- ing many grandchildren of the original flower. In fact, that family became so numerous under judicious slippings that its descendants were farmed out or given for adoption into the homes of grateful children who frequently offered slips of other flowers in return. To ask for a slip is in many communities a most acceptable compliment to the successful grower of house plants. Many of the begonias are easily propagated from pieces of stem or leaf, and their bright colors and unique leafage make them universally pleasing. For outdoor work about the school ask for roots of lilac, forsythia or yellow flowering willow, flower- ing almond or flowering quince, bridal wreath or peonies.
Strive for a clean school yard as you would for a clean schoolroom, but do not stop there. Beauty
* At the least, one can have that always interesting thing, an eggshell garden, for it needs but a few seeds, one or two of them planted in each shell that has been filled with a little rich soil. Later the seedlings may be transplanted into the school or home garden.
68
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
has its moral effect on a child. It is useless to expect untarnished morality from children whose parents provide ramshackle outbuildings and schools uninteresting and repellent outside and in, where no playgrounds exist and where no provision is made to keep investigating minds safely busy when not occupied with lessons. Clothe your outbuildings with vines, screen them with groups of trees, plant your grounds with things that invite the children to note their growth or to enjoy their welcome shade. Make school a delightful place in which to linger because it has so many charming interests. Childish activity whether of mind or body needs direction. As in the childhood of the race morality was an un- known thing, so too in childhood, some of the evils that we most deplore are at certain ages largely the outburst of the investigating spirit spending itself upon what is near at hand in default of better, happier things with which to fill otherwise vacant moments.
No scheme or plan for the decoration of the rural school can be completed in one season, but a beginning, pleasing to the eye, is a good thing, a fertile seed of usefulness.
In rural districts, gardens for experiment or sample plots for observation are sometimes possible even on a relatively microscopic scale. Classroom demonstration of the qualities of soils and other experiments may illustrate the growth upon these small plots. The country boy, of
69
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
course, has no use for farming on tiny beds that to city children seem veritable plantations. Such baby farming and such instruction in the first use of tools as would be welcome in the city would be ridiculous in the country. Possibly a farmer's boy hates the whole business of farm-
Canadian Boys Spraying Potatoes
ing and longs for the day when he can get away from it and enjoy life more as he fancies his city cousins do. His father, perhaps, has no use for the new school frills, and does not want interference or intrusion on his home ground. But it may be feasible to introduce school gardening by suggest- ing that one boy or group of boys should conduct
70
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
home experiments, as, for instance, with two apple trees or two patches of potatoes, spraying the one and not the other and having different children make occasional visits to compare notes.* On the other hand, throughout New England and New York, many schoolhouses have barely ground enough for the children's recess. Yet even so, if a few feet of ground could be planted, for example, to cabbages or potatoes, an experi- ment could be conducted that would touch the taxpayer's pocket, dissolve the shell of preju- dice, and win at least a grudging acknowledg- ment that there is some merit in school gardening. Such a plot could be divided into halves and one part planted with selected eyes from large, well formed potatoes while the other half should be seeded with eyes from small or indifferent stock. One-half of each division should be carefully sprayed against the ravages of the potato bug. The other half should be left to care for itself. The result would show the relative value of the crops in a most convincing way. Ten cabbages would demonstrate the ravages of the common cabbage butterfly and, incident- ally, of the cabbage root maggot and the flea beetle in localities where they abound. Four
* See Appendix A, Note 4, for Dr. Robertson's offer of prize money for wheat and oats grown by the children of Canada, and notice the bearing of this upon the school garden work.
Where there is a branch of the Grange it is well to ask it, indi- vidually or collectively, for suggestions and for aid in improving the school premises. See Appendix A, Note 5. 6 y,
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
heads of cabbage should be carefully screened by one piece of cheese cloth or netting and four by another, while two may be left uncovered. Those uncovered will be exposed while young seedlings and tender plants to attacks of the beetle and the maggot. Those covered will be pro-
Canby, Minn., Public School Garden and Experimental Farm
tected from the cabbage butterfly; but it is pro- posed to introduce under one of the screens all the white butterflies of this variety of pierids which the children may catch. Later, the riddled leaves of one group of plants will show the ravages of the caterpillar hatched from the but-
72
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
terflies' eggs, and the life history of the insect may be presented as a complete story for the children.
The Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, furnishes on request, brief, accurate, and popularly written leaflets on the cabbage butter- fly (Farmers' Bulletin No. 142) and one on potato culture (No. 35).* Many other bulletins on various subjects are issued by the department, a list of which will be sent upon application.! State experiment stations also issue free bulletins, and their experts stand ready to answer any questions in regard to soils, plant or insect life. In writing for bulletins, it is well to explain whether those treating the subject from the popular or from the scientific side are wanted, as many stations issue two series. If specimens are to be sent for identification a note should pre- cede them. If it be concluded with a word of thanks for the favor about to be conferred and followed by a postal card acknowledging the in- formation when received, the courtesy is appre- ciated by the busy officials whose letters mount daily into the hundreds, but who like to know that their answers have supplied the needed informa- tion. One man said "Experience teaches us that we cannot expect this, but we do prefer it."
* See also Potato Culture in Cornell Agricultural College Leaflets Nos. iq6, 140, and Appendix A, Note 6, telling results of experiments by Canadian children.
t See Bibliography.
73
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Courtesy is pretty sure to be remembered and to bear interest.
In our western states much has been done to improve rural school conditions. Many counties and normal schools publish bulletins, some of them free, others at slight cost, most of which are very helpful. In the west and south the famous
School Garden, State Normal School, Kearney, Nebraska
corn contests are carried on among clubs of farmers' boys.* In Nebraska, some 2200 boys have en- gaged in growing seed corn in prize competition. One state offered a two weeks' trip to Washing- ton, D. C, to the boy who won first prize, and
* An interesting account of the work of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, among farmer boys of the south, will be found in The Outlook, Feb. 5,1910, pp. 279-280
74
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
each county added a premium of I150 if tiie prize winner was found among its own lads. In Illinois, apart from corn contests better- ment of rural school conditions and the open- ing of school gardens have been actively pushed, especially in Winnebago County under Super- intendent O. J. Kern. Other counties have followed the lead, and there has been a steadv development since 1906 when Marion county had ten school gardens, ten per cent of the schools in McHenry county had gardens. Coles county had a garden of one acre for its graded school, Pike county had a garden, and Peoria county had twenty-five in connection with rural schools.*
Many schools in country districts could follow the custom adopted in the cities of giving out seeds for the children to plant in their home gardens, and the teacher's social call might include supervision of these. Speaking of the work in Concord Normal School, Athens, W, Va., where seeds are distributed to the children to be planted in home plots with supervision and advice by the head of the department, the prin- cipal, Mr. C. L. Bemis, writes:
"The reason we are doing our work in this way is because we have no ground of our own for such work. I think I should prefer the way we are doing it, anyway, because it makes the parents more interested in the work, and all the child raises is his own. li is necessary, however, for him
*Kern, O.J.: Among Country Schools, p. 82. 75
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
to return seeds to the school for those taken away from the school. He has to carry the plant through from the seed to the seed.""^
In the south, also, attempts are being made to interest the farmers' children in flower or vegetable gardens of their own. Among the central states, as in Ohio, the work in this line sometimes does not take the form of technical instruction in agriculture, but rather of teaching that shall open the children's eyes to the growing life about them. Sometimes this is done by reading from the works of such authors as Riley, Carleton, Burroughs, who write of the farm, woods and fields ; sometimes by stories of what men like Burbank have done, or of the achievements of men like McCormick who have invented labor saving tools. In garden and nature study work the object is to make the country boy realize the natural forces with which he must deal, the wonderful changes that go on about him; to lead him to scientific understanding of his environment, appreciation of his economic position, and to realization of the aesthetic enjoyment possible in his surround- ings.f Such intellectual training will not carry
* The italics are the author's. Following the circuit of the free traveHng libraries in seven of the southern states, over a hundred school gardens have been established in connection with the rural schools.
f " If the farmer as he trudges down the corn rows under the June sun sees only clods and weeds and corn, he leads an empty and a barren life. But if he knows of the work of the moisture in air and soil, of the use of air to root and leaf, of the mysterious chemistry in
76
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS
his interests away from tiie farm, as is so often the case in school hfe now, but will provide breadth of culture, make rural life fuller and give a mental alertness useful for all time, whether the boy remains upon the farm or enters industrial or professional life.
We of the north Atlantic coast pride ourselves upon the little red schoolhouse, and the church steeples that crown our New England hills; upon the virtue that came out of them and went into the making of our country. But this is now largely a matter of historic pride and poetic sentiment only. Today the New England school- house is too frequently a blot on our civilization; a raw, ugly object, spoiling the beauty of the landscape, indecent in its surroundings; of rude, unlovely exterior, with only the flag as an inspira- tion; and with a dismal, uncomfortable interior for tasks that have but little vital connection with the life which the children lead. Even in the largest buildings and with the wider curriculum of the schools of the small towns there is no place for the development of the farmer's boy as there is for the child of the merchant, mechanic, artizan or artist. There is no outlook toward the agricultural
the sunbeam, of the vital forces in the growing plant, and of the bac- teria in the soil liberating its elements of fertility; if he sees all the relation of all these natural forces to his own work; if he can follow his crop to the market, to foreign lands, to the mill, to the oven and the table — he realizes that he is no mere toiler." Felmley, David: Agriculture and Horticulture in the Rural Schools.
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
college as toward the college of arts and sciences or the special professional or trade school. " Manual
What Is!
.^■••II'M//, VtJil//'''' •"••'""iSiZ- .V",///, . 1,,/^, . 'liHA/*.- "I"/*-/^,,. ,||,/a„,.... \,...,\j,,„,, , l/i.flv,„.
From Farmers' BuUelin, No. 218
What Might Be
training has brought the shop and school together but the farm and school are still far apart."
78
DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS No Lime With Lime
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(■) Nothing |
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(2) Nitrate of Soda |
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(3) Acid Phosphate |
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(4) Muriate of Potash |
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(5) Complete Fertihzer |
• |
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(6) Nitrate of Soda and Acid Phos. |
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(7) Nitrate of Soda and KCl (Potassium chlorid or muriate) |
" |
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(8) KCl and Acid Phos. |
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(9) Street Sweepings |
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(lO) Street Sweepings and Complete Fertilizer |
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(11) Cultivated Unsprayed |
every lo Days Sprayed |
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(12) Cultivated '• every other Day Unsprayed , Sprayed |
Experimental Plots. School Garden, Roger Williams Park, Provi- dence, R. 1. Courtesy of E. K. Thomas.
A Suggested Experimental Plot.
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
It is possible to make the school and its sur- roundings more attractive, to give its dry routine a closer connection with the children's daily lives, and through it to add new interests to the life of field and wood. It does not need a nurseryman to give a lesson in transplanting vines or bushes or young trees; to set out a growth of baby pine or red cedars for a wind-break or rapidly growing sumac for a screen; to plant the royal aster or glowing golden rod in a dismal corner, or train the clematis to cover bare walls or fences. This much can surely be attempted and possibly also a small vegetable garden or trial plots on a larger scale for work with grains and fertilizers. Experimental plots are better on the rural school ground especially where land is cheap, for they can be made to bear directly upon the economic interests of the community. Moreover, the cost of land increases, and if its purchase is deferred from year to year in rural towns, whole districts become built up and we soon have the problem of the congested city dis- trict.
The experimental gardens while intended first of all for the wholesome, full development of child nature, frequently aim to be feeders for the agri- cultural colleges or high schools. They purpose to deepen in children a love for country life and to teach them that the farmer's calling offers equal opportunity with other livelihoods for well rounded development, pleasant work and successful effort.
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CHAPTER 111 SOIL FERTILITY
CHAPTER III SOIL FERTILITY
"Agriculture is the oldest of the arts and the newest of the sci- ences."
" Finely divided nutritious soil, with a reasonable supply of water, is the prime requisite of successful gardening."
"Perfect agriculture is the true foundation of trade and indus- try,— it is the true foundation of the riches of states."
TO become a successful teacher of school gardening it is not necessary to be an agri- culturist, botanist, entomologist, psych- ologist or chef; but a knowledge of the funda- mental principles of agriculture is needed, in order to give plants their right soil, and to protect and encourage their growth. Elementary botany is needed to make clear to the child processes of growth, the adaptation of parts to development, and the life history of the plant. The teacher should have sufficient knowledge of entomology to discriminate between the insects that are benefi- cial and those that are hurtful to plant life, and to tell their life story. She should be enough of a cook to give practical lessons in preparing the food raised in the garden, and to be on the watch to introduce the use of new vegetables, especially
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
those suitable for salads or greens. Further, the gardening instructor need not be a trained psy- chologist, but must know how to present the facts of the garden so in accord with the laws of asso- ciation as to call forth the child's quick sense for analogies, to hold attention, to whet curiosity, and
Children Who Need School Gardens
to grip the memory. Otherwise, the garden will only teach about growing plants and not develop perception, judgment and stronger moral fiber.
There are constant illustrations of the fact that these aims can be attained, and a garden that falls short of such results is a failure. In Carleton
84
SOIL FERTILITY
county, Canada, 71 per cent of the children from schools with gardens passed their high school ex- aminations, while from schools without gardens only 49 per cent passed. This was a gain of 22 per cent during the three years the Macdonald school had been established there. American teachers also report growth in mental alertness, in the sense of responsibility for school property and appearance, and less disorder and naughtiness from the exuberance of animal spirits that now find a safe vent in gardening. In the large garden of the National Cash Register Company the men- tality of the boys who entered as farmers was increased 30 per cent, while their morals so im- proved that city lots, safe at last from their depredations, rose in value from $200 and «|300, to $400 and |6oo.
It is fundamental for school gardeners to under- stand how to create soil fertility and preserve reasonable moisture. Upon these, more than upon anything else, successful crops depend.
Soil, "that part of the earth which can be culti- vated and in which plants can grow", is dis- integrated rock with more or less decayed and decaying organic matter — vegetable or animal — mixed through it. Such matter is called humus, or sometimes "vegetable soil" because so largely composed of decaying vegetation. When soils are divided according to their texture, they are known as gravel, coarse sand, medium sand, fine sand, very fine sand, silt, clay and
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
"vegetable soil". The most common types of nearly pure humus are the leaf mold of the woods, or the rich, soft, friable earth, still showing its origin, found at the bottom and under the edges of every old woodpile. From this almost clear vegetable soil, humus in varying quantities runs through the different varieties of soil mentioned, almost entirely disappearing in the coarser sands and gravel. It is of the utmost importance to plants because it not only largely furnishes them food, but through the chemical changes it is con- stantly undergoing, it helps to break up the more insoluble mineral constituents of the soil into finer particles, and thus tends constantly to increase both the supply of plant food and the area over which and through which the tiny root fibers can make their way. Herein lies one of the values of well-rotted, coarse barnyard manure over the ar- tificial fertilizers. The manure helps the plants mechanically as well as chemically.
So important is the humus that its relative quantities determine the division of soils ac- cording to their productivity.* A good loam, an excellent soil for most growth, is approxi- mately one-third gravel, one-third clay and one- third humus. To this, land in a farming country
* There is still another division of soils according to their forma- tion. Their names tell their story, — sedimentary soil, transported soil, alluvial soil, glacial soil and wind-formed soil. On the leeward side of arid lands and deserts the soil, carried there by the wind, is often very fine and fertile.
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SOIL FERTILITY
may very likely approach, or readily be made to approach by the use of ordinary fertilizers. Ac- cording to soil fertility, a division is made into (i) sandy soil, containing 80 to 100 per cent of sand; (2) sandy loam, with 60 to 80 per cent of sand; (this is light to work, and if plant food be added, is quicker in results, hence desirable for truck farming) ; (3) loam with 40 to 60 per cent of sand, the best all round soil (if air dried, it will weigh 100 pounds per cubic foot; while aver- age garden soil weighs about 70 pounds) ; (4) clay loam with 20 to 40 per cent of sand; and (5) clay, a heavy soil, likely to be cold, with from 20 per cent of sand to no appreciable amount.
For a number of reasons a light sandy loam is preferable for children's gardens. It is less subject to weather conditions than the other soils. Consequently, it can be worked at almost any time, as, for example, earlier in the spring and sooner after showers. The children can handle it more easily than the colder clay, which tends to become hard and lumpy, to hold pools of stagnant water, and to form slippery paths where a tumble might be disastrous to clothing or to plants. A light loam will grow and rapidly mature, with comparatively little special treatment, the plants usually selected for the children's beds, as well as nearly all those chosen for the observation or sample plots. It is the least difficult soil; conse- quently it is the standard to which one should try to attain when soils on school garden sites have 7 87
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
to be improved. There is still another division of soils based upon the ease with which they may be worked. Sandy soils are usually called " light " because they are easier to work, though in equal quantities they really weigh more; for a cubic foot of dry sand weighs i lo pounds and the same amount of clay about 80 pounds.
Soil, as thus far discussed, is that part of the earth's surface sometimes called the "top-soil" in distinction from the "subsoil". As the top- soil practically holds all the humus, the subsoil is virtually non-nutritious, disintegrated rock. Accordingly, when we speak of soil, we usually mean the top layer, whether a few inches or a few feet in depth. This depth is all important to the gardener, for under no circumstances must the top-soil be destroyed or the subsoil be turned over upon it. That will be the result if ploughing is too deep or if, in grading, the top-soil be leveled off or subsoil be dumped upon it. Between these two soils there is usually a difference in color and texture.
A gardener or householder should see that in the garden or about the home grounds every particle of the top-soil shall be preserved. So important is this, that a wise husbandman will not harrow his land on a windy day lest the wind carry oflf in clouds of fme dust the food particles so desirable for his crops. In grading, it is some- times necessary to skim off the top-soil, level, and replace it. Where the top layer is thin, and the
SOIL FERTILITY
gardener thrifty, the top-soil of paths, as they are made or cleaned, is thrown on the beds and made in some measure to replace soil that has been worn out or removed by adhering to the roots of weeds and rubbish. A vegetable garden can be built up on four inches of top-soil by avoiding deep root crops and by frequent fertilization to replace exhausted plant food. A flower garden, carefully selected for shallow running roots, can be built upon less depth. But grains require more as they send their roots from two to four feet deep and corn requires even six feet. It is therefore essen- tial to recognize and conserve this top layer of soil.
Finely divided soil may, as in the case of soils of reasonable fertility and lightness, be obtained by a mere mechanical division and multiplication of particles, by ploughing, harrowing or by deep spading and raking. If an experienced plough- man is not to be had, and the area permits, by all means thoroughly spade it. Land should be prepared in the fall. It should be ploughed evenly, deeply and carefully, turning in well rotted manure that has been spread about three inches deep. This depth of manure is necessary for the rich soil demanded in a school garden, where the same soil may be required to carry successive crops in one season. Ten cords to the acre is a farm average, and spreads a layer of one-quarter of an inch. Market gardens often use from 25 to 30 cords; truck farmers on small areas use still more.
89
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
If fresh, it may be turned in in less quantity and the land allowed to lie unplanted for some time, or it may be heaped in piles, wet down and allowed to decompose for several weeks. In warm weather such piles should not be left to breed flies, and they should at all times be mixed with soil to prevent the escape into the air of nitrogenous gases from the decomposing nitrogen compounds. Fresh manure will burn out seeds and scorch plants.
Land is better with a so-called cover crop of some sort, often winter rye, which in the spring may be turned in early as green manure. After a little opportunity for it to decompose, the ground may be ploughed or spaded and harrowed (spring tooth harrow), raked, and so put in order for the laying out and planting of the garden. Where a grass sod exists, it must be disc-harrowed in both directions and cut again and again before being ploughed in. If the school garden is not decided upon until spring, the land must be fertilized,* ploughed or spaded, and allowed to lie open a few days to air and sun before planting.
In respect to the suitability of a soil for cultiva-
* Commercial fertilizer for school gardens on medium light garden soil may be figured at i pint per 5 x lo feet plot or 100 pounds per 100 such plots, provided it is an "all round fertilizer". Such a one would carry 60 per cent bone meal or dust (or 30 pounds superphos- phate), 20 pounds nitrate of soda, 20 pounds muriate of potash. If fertilizer of one constituent only is used, bone meal is probably preferable. Pulverized sheep manure is an all round fertilizer and safer to use since it will not burn rootlets or many kinds of seed.
90
SOIL FERTILITY
tion, the simplest test is to compress a handful, then, opening the fingers, give it a light toss. The compressed lump should show a light im- pression of the fingers. When tossed to the ground, it should fall all apart with the soil grains adhering in masses too small to be called lumps. If the soil is sticky, over wet, over heavy (clayey), coarse, or over light so as to fall in distinct grains (sandy), it will not answer the test.
A chemical test of the soil would give all the elements it contained and their proportions, but would not determine what portion of them is available for plant food. To be so available, there must first of all be a reasonable amount of water. Root fibres can absorb no food except as it is in solution in the tiny films of water sur- rounding each infinitesimal particle that goes to make up the little masses usually spoken of as atoms of soil. This film moisture is known technically as "hygroscopic moisture" to distinguish it from the capillary water which is held in the spaces between the soil particles by capillary attraction, and which is of direct use to the plant in carrying plant food from place to place. This capillary water finds its reservoir in the "ground water", which is the water that has percolated through the soil until it reaches an impervious layer, where it gathers to supply our springs and wells. To return to the hygroscopic moisture, where there is so small a quantity as
91
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
from three to ten parts of plant food in solution in one million parts of water, it will be sufficient to support plant life if it is constantly supplied. The process by which the food-laden water enters the root hairs and passes throughout the plant is called "osmosis". No crop will grow in a sandy soil holding less than 19 per cent of water, or in a clayey one with less than 38 per cent. As the arrangement of the soil particles bears a close relation to the agricultural value of the land, their number (varying in soils of different texture) will indicate in a general way the suitability of the ground for crops.*
The practical gardener or nurseryman will tell good soil at a glance, or what poor soil needs to improve it. A novice may fmd out by the phys- ical test of earth taken from different parts of the proposed garden site. It is customary to take the earth out by driving a tube from six inches to afoot into the ground. Any kind of a tube, such as an old apple corer, or better, a boy's blow pipe, will do. The steps of the process of testing are as follows: (i) Thoroughly mix the specimens, un- less they are very unlike (if so, test separately). Carefully weigh, noting first the weight of the receptacle (the best kind is an old, shallow tin
* As an illustration, grass and wheat thrive best in soil having 396,900,000,000 grains of clay to the ounce, while corn lands should have from 170,100,000,000 to 198,450,000,000 grains. Fifteen hundred pounds of quicklime to the acre will by its decomposing power {not fertilizing), change wheat or grass lands to corn lands. Such problems do not confront the ordinary school gardener.
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SOIL FERTILITY
pan), and the weight of it and the soil together. Then, over a low flame so as to avoid scorching or burning the earth, drive off the moisture it contains, weighing from time to time until a constant weight is obtained. Thus you will find the weight of water and by ratio its percentage in the soil. (2) Find the percentage of humus by heating for twenty minutes, sufficiently to burn out all organic matter as proved by again ob- taining a constant weight. The difference be- tween the constant weight of (i) and of (2) will give the weight of humus and its percentage. Then (3) test for the gravel and sands by sifting. The United States government uses a set of brass sieves. Homemade ones will answer, such as boxes with their bottoms replaced by fine wire gauze and by bolting cloth. Gravel will not pass through a wire mesh of less than two millimeters diameter. Coarse sand will not go through one less than one millimeter; medium sand, through one less than one-half millimeter; and fine sand, through one less than one-fourth, while very fine sand will not pass through a sieve of one-twentieth of a millimeter mesh or less. For separating the last two, bolting cloth of a mesh known as No. 5 and 13 may be used. The silt and clay are mingled and will be separated by the fourth step. (4) The silt and clay are carefully weighed, then shaken with a quantity of water and boiled for ten minutes or longer. Then they are allowed to stand until the heavy silt sinks to the bottom and
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
the clay in solution can be decanted oflF. The water in both is then evaporated and each in turn weighed to constant weight or to within one thirty-second of an ounce thereof. Soil grains of silt run from one-twentieth to one one-hun- dredth of a millimeter in diameter, and of clay from one five-thousandth to one ten-thousandth.* To complete the experiment, the weights of the gravel and of each of the sand residues should be found. Each of the varieties found in soil may be put in a small vial, neatly labeled with name and percentage, and mounted on a card. If humus and water of the determined weights be also placed in vials, the card will be a complete exhibit of the garden soil in its physical charac- teristics and approximate supply of plant food.
At first thought, it would seem as if the finer clay would furnish more plant food. It does hold more. The soil grains of a cubic foot of coarse sand will spread over one-fourth an acre, while those in the same amount of finest clay will spread over four acres. Consequently, the clay with its myriads of film surfaces will hold more water. But clay soils are so compact that water stagnates in them, cutting off the air that should go to the roots, tending to sour the ground and to develop in it mold and fungus disease. On top,
* The experiment can be shortened by a determination of the water, the humus, all the sands, and the clay and silt in one mass. Plants will not grow in over 80 per cent of sand, or over 60 per cent of clay.
94
SOIL FERTILITY
clay will dry, cake, and crack open when the sur- face moisture is sunned out.
It is known that plants take from 50 to 90 per cent of their food, of which three-fourths is carbon, from the air. This carbon is derived from the car- bonic acid gas, which is at least 30 per cent greater in the ground air than in the air we breathe. Where there is suificient moisture in the ground to allow a free circulation, there is sure to be both a con- stant supply of air, of available plant food in the soil, and also a sufficiently deep passage of sun- light to keep plants healthy. Accordingly, if the garden site has too much clay and is soggy, it may be treated with quicklime to sweeten it* and break it up into finer particles, or with coarse manures and turned-in cover crops. Both will furnish readily available plant food and help to lighten the soil. Sand and even coal ashes, in reasonable quantities, leaves, and any organic matter, if decaying rapidly enough to quickly disintegrate, may also be used. Furthermore, paths can be laid to act as surface drains. f
If one has to deal with a too sandy soil, the need is for an admixture of clay and humus, which will act, as will also manure, to help conserve soil
* Five to ten barrels per acre. The sourness of soil can be detected by its turning blue litmus paper red.
t Land where the water stands in pools upon the surface must be drained by trenching or the equivalent as above; where water is held too freely the soil must be tiled. Occasionally, a small and perhaps temporary ditch will carry off the excess of water due to spring rains.
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
moisture. In such a soil, the nitrates are apt to be lacking; they are so soluble they wash away. Plants must have nitrogen, and their root fibers will accept it only in the form of nitrates in solu- tion. One whole class of plants, however, the leguminosae, of which the pea and bean and the clover are typical are an exception, for they possess the unique characteristic of bearing on their rootlets nodules in which dwell colonies of bacteria that have the power to take free nitrogen from the air and convert it into nitrates. It is well to remember that white beans and sand peas will grow in the poorest of soils, and that crimson clover is a good cover crop.* Therefore, if you have almost to construct a good soil, plant beans, and later turn them in.f Buckwheat is a good crop for poor soils. Crops with tap roots help to keep the soil open.
The prime object is to make a soil that shall be fertile, fine and friable, — in one word "mellow," — and further to so control and utilize the natural water supply in the earth that the chemical com- pounds in the soil shall be held in suspension in the water films. This is absolutely essential where an artificial water supply, by hydrant or irrigation, is not possible. In aiming for a fine
* The reason for a cover crop is three-fold: to keep soils from washing away (as down hillsides); to keep their soluble foods from leaching out; and to add enrichment when used as green fertilizers.
t In localities adapted to them cow-peas are excellent for this purpose.
q6
SOIL FERTILITY
cultivation of the ground, remember that, at the rate of making two inches every ten years of the finest and most fertile top-soil, earthworms or angle worms are trying to help, and do not despise them.* Encourage them in the garden and do not neglect the lesson that these little ploughmen teach. They digest earth and vegetable food through their strong, muscular bodies, and literally grind out a new, rich soil. The large stretches of velvety turf that one drives over in approaching Stonehenge in the south of England, as well as the partially buried stones, testify to their industry through long centuries.
Exhausted soils teach the old lesson, that you cannot have your cake and eat it, too. Plants cannot take large supplies out of the soil without exhausting it. Therefore if the school garden is to devour plant supplies, intensive farming, or the constant supply of fertilizers each season and often during the season must be practiced, as is done in truck farming where many successive crops are repeatedly raised upon the same area.
In order to preserve soil moisture, dry farming is followed. By it all moisture within about ten feet of the surface of the ground may be called
* Earthworms in flower pots and window boxes are undesirable because their burrows allow water to run through the pot or box too rapidly. Watering the plant with lime water — a handful or 5 inch lump of quicklime to a 2 quart pitcher of water — will destroy them. An interesting experiment is to have a quantity of earth where the work of the worms can be watched; they can be fed with fresh grass, onion stalks, or even raw meat. See Darwin on Earthworms.
S 97
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
into use, and the greater part of that due to rains or heavy dews can be preserved. Two simple experiments will determine approximately the moisture conditions of the proposed garden. The illustration shows the apparatus, a set of chimneys in a rack, their lower openings covered with cheese-cloth. Soils of different textures
Device for Experiments with Soil
are placed to the same height in the chimneys. The porosity of different soils is shown by the rapidity with which the same amount of water poured in each chimney passes through its con- tents, and their power of absorption by the amount absorbed in passing. The capillarity of the soil may be shown by reversing the experiment, and
q8
SOIL FERTILITY
with the ends of the chimneys resting in water, allowing the water to creep up through the dry soils. Notice how long it will take water to creep up through six inches of good soil; how long to pass down through it.
The modification of the porous quality of soils is accomplished by the same means used in chang- ing clay to sandy soils or the reverse. The capil- larity of soils is modified by these same changes which make the soils more close or open, as may be required. But in the best of soils, capillarity has to be checked so as to keep down near the roots the ground moisture and to prevent its rise to the surface and its escape by evaporation. The simplest means is by dry farming; that is, by a dust mulch or dust blanket which is a covering of loose, fine earth from two to three inches deep over the whole surface of cultivated plots. It should be frequently renewed over small areas by the hand plough, or by the use of hoe and rake, or by the cultivating stick, and always as soon after rain or even heavy dew as the ground is workable.* "In general, soil should not contain more than 60 per cent of its water-holding capacity; /. e. at least two-fifths of the spaces should be occupied by air."
Where natural manure cannot be obtained, resort must be had to commercial fertilizers. Sometimes, however, street sweepings may be
* Over large tracts of land by the horse or steam plow set to the required depth with care to avoid cutting roots.
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AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
utilized, especially those gathered immediately after the snow of winter has gone. They con- tain some manure mixed with a soft muck, rich in humus, that has sifted through the snow. There is more than one successful school garden whose only available fertilizer was such street refuse. Some people object to such material as containing too many weed seeds. Undoubtedly there are a great many, because no food for horses can be wholly free from them, and birds also carry and drop them. Such means are among nature's methods for spreading green things over the earth. But cultivation and thorough weeding during the first six or eight weeks of a school garden should leave it in such condition as to require very little attention during the long sum- mer vacation. The several days' work scattered through the summer, or a few minutes each day by a paid attendant will give the garden a presentable appearance and a fair showing of fall crops when school begins and harvest days are at hand.
There is a city backyard garden 45 x 100 feet that twenty years ago, at the death of the master of the house, had, besides hardy perennials and a variety of annuals and roses, more than four hundred species of wild flowers. During a period of perhaps a dozen years, flowers had been col- lected from the country round about. The owner was a well-known scientist and botany was his side interest. Each plant had been carefully taken up with a ball of earth so large as not to
100
SOIL FERTILITY
disturb its roots or make it miss its native environ- ment. It had been transplanted into a shady or sunny corner of the yard best suited to its nature. The garden even at the time of the owner's death was an old one, laid out in quaint box- bordered beds by an old Scotchman, who so thor- oughly understood the value of fine soil that it became a saying that "there wasn't a spoonful of earth in the whole garden that hadn't been sifted between grandfather's thumb and forefinger." For twenty years no attempt was made to re- place plants that died. Yet, today at least a dozen species of ferns and probably eighty kinds of wild plants may be found there.
For forty years it has been a household tradi- tion that from blossoming of earliest hepatica or crocus until frost, there should be continual bloom among its hardy perennials and annuals. In the many changes during those years, it has sometimes happened that the beauty of the garden could be preserved only by a woman's spading it from end to end. It was never suf- fered to become a tangle, though sometimes for consecutive years it has had to go without fertilizer. It was for many years kept in order by the labor of a gardener hired for three days each spring and fall and by the frequent half-hour periods of weeding that could be given by one almost an invalid. In its earliest days, its bloom took prizes at the county fairs, and to- day, surrounded by city houses, the neighborhood
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
children call it Maplewood Park, ask to walk about it or, with their dolls, to sit upon its two settles to enjoy its flowers and watch its minia- ture pond, where grow, and early grew, the first pink pond lilies in that section of the country. The Department of Public Works or its good- natured employes may be induced to give street sweepings to your garden. They should be piled or spread with a loose covering of earth, or if need be of lime. If piled, wet them down a little and leave them a few days to ripen. The covering will prevent the breeding of pernicious flies.* Before school gardens were heard of, we have occasionally seen boys gathering into home- made carts street refuse to fertilize their own, or more likely their father's, small backyard gardens. Recently, in crowded lower New York, I watched a small boy with a pointed stick industriously spearing street manure with a businesslike grav- ity that boded ill to the urchin who interfered with him or guyed him. The little collector had learned that it was filth only as it lay in the street breeding flies and disease. He had also learned that, in the wise economy of nature, though manure was a waste product, it was in itself full of rich food for the plants in his garden which if well nourished would grow into nutritious fruits and bright flowers.
* Some day, show a fly's foot under the microscope or an en- larged drawing of it. Emphasize the fact that it can carry typhoid and other disease germs and urge the humane killing of the fly.
102
SOIL FERTILITY
To replace with suitable words as symbols of clear and true ideas the street gamin's vocabulary is a part of the school gardener's business. It is not always to be done by direct teaching. As Doctor Richard Hodge once said before a mother's meeting, when talking about teaching religion to children below the age of adolescence, " You
Hauling Street Sweepings, Louisville, Ky.
are not to teach religion directly to little children but as a natural and inevitable by-product of what you do teach and the way you teach."
In villages and rural districts several different kinds of animal manure may be offered as fer- tilizers. They vary in fertilizing value,* but
* See Farmers' Bulletin No. 21, Farmyard Manures. 103
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Stress upon their relative heating capacity is the more important. In passing, perhaps there should be a word of caution about using any of them that have been allowed to lie too long exposed to sun and rain so that their soluble constituents, especially their nitrates, may have leached into the ground and their other nitrogen compounds may have passed into the air in the well-known ammonia fumes. Neither should any fertilizer be allowed to become corrupted by mold or spores of toadstool or mushroom. In one instance that came under the author's observation, a florist lost two-fifths of a crop of greenhouse roses, mean- ing hundreds of dollars in lost sales and cost of coal, because his son hastily selected a pile of manure and mixed it with the fall supply of earth for the greenhouse benches. The boy had been sent to inspect the manure before purchasing. He had arrived at dusk of a fall day and visited the heap with a lantern. His hasty examination of it satis- fied him. He paid for it, had it carted home, and had it in the greenhouse before his father discovered spores of mushrooms. The older man had picked up his knowledge of flowers. He thought he would better take the risk than lose time, labor and money. In the end, it was an expensive decision. Among manures, that from cows is known as cold.* Hen manure is very hot and should always
* It contains the largest per cent of water (75.3) while sheep ma- nure has less (59.5 per cent) and hen, least (56 per cent). These last two may have the same amount of nitrogen, nearly twice that of cows.
104
SOIL FERTILITY
have a large admixture of earth. The sheep droppings in the large stock yards are regularly swept and put on the market in 25 cent boxes or at I2 per 1 00 pounds. Sometimes they are pulverized. The nuggets are apt to be fresher. On very small areas and in window gardening, sheep ma-
" My Garden Did Its Best."
nure is perhaps the easiest, cleanest and best fer- tilizer to handle. It can be used for indoor gar- dening, dry, one part to six of soil, or in liquid form, I pound to 5 gallons of water, and sprayed. The up-to-date farmer saves all liquid manure, for it is specially rich in nitrates, as the function of the kidneys is to carry off all excess of proteid
105
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
or nitrogenous matter.* Consequently all liquid manures must be largely diluted with water, and all commercial nitrates, either made into a weak solution or as solids, must be used most sparingly. No commercial fertilizer should ever touch the seeds or roots but should be thoroughly mixed with fine, loose earth.
Seedsmen and nursery men frequently sell an all round or "general fertilizer." For school garden experiments of small area, it is better to buy separate fertilizers, as nitrate of soda for the nitrates, wood ashes for potash, and ground bone for the phosphates, mixing them when necessary and just before use so as not to lose the more volatile elements. The reason is founded on a rough rule: feed nitrates for leafage and rapid growth; potash for root and fruit crops, intensity of color and increase in bloom; and phosphates for early maturity and plump seeds. Another rule is that commercial fertilizers, like tonics, give quicker results, while natural fertilizers give a slow, steady food supply throughout the season, and by their physical properties improve the soil for all time.f
Plants often profit by a little extra feeding at the start. Sickly plants and some others need a
* It is also rich in potash. It contains from three to five times as much nitrate and about nine times as much potash as the soUd manures which hold by far the larger percentage of phosphates.
f Fertilizers may be rushed on for leafage crops and these rotated with seed or grain crops the following year and these again by clover
I 06
SOIL FERTILITY
special diet. The two classes of fertilizers are often combined by using the natural fertilizer as the general food for the whole garden, and by adding in the row a small amount of special fer- tilizer; for example, a pint of ground bone or bone meal to a ten-foot row of peas, is mixed thoroughly in the bottom of a four-inch trench and covered with a light layer of soil, before the peas are planted, so as to give them a good start.
Of some seventeen elements required for plant structure, about half a dozen are all-important. For the needed small quantities of the others, the plant may be left to shift for itself. Of the important ones, oxygen comes from the air, from water and from chemical disintegration. From the chemical separation of water comes hydrogen. Nitrogen has been accounted for. From 50 to 90 per cent of the food of plants is taken from the air, and three-fourths of that percentage is carbon derived from carbonic acid gas. Potash and phosphates come from decaying animal and vegetable matter and from the fertilizers used. Lime, iron, sulphur and magnesium are indispens- able.* They usually, however, exist in sufficient quantities in the soil, and are found in some measure in the fertilizers discussed.
or leguminous plants. Never use nitrate upon these nitrate making factories.
Commercial fertilizers are better used on clay soils for they are not as liable to be washed out and the chemical action they set up disintegrates the clay particles.
* Osterhout, W. J. V.: Experiments With Plants, p. 139. 107
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
One who understands the nature of the soil to be dealt with, and knows how to improve it can fol- low intelligently the cultural directions on nearly all seed packets or in catalogues of plants.* No theoretical knowledge, no word knowledge, can ever take the place of practical experience, but it can materially help to prevent gross errors. First, last and always, give your plants plenty of soluble food and keep their feet dry. Very few love any approach to a swamp. Give them good soil conditions. "Tillage," or cultivation, "is the stirring of the soil in order to improve it." Thorough tillage, whether with plough, hoe, or cultivating stick, means to kill weeds; to pulverize the soil that it may be open and uni- form in texture; to create air spaces; to widen pasturage for roots; to conserve moisture; to admit sunlight and warmth; to admit rain, with its solvent foods; to cause organic matter to be- come humus; to turn over soil that its bacteria may better work upon it; in short, to create finely divided, nutritious, soluble soil particles.
* See list of plants for nearly all soil conditions and all sorts of places, in Appendix A, Note 7.
108
CHAPTER IV COST OF EQUIPMENT
CHAPTER IV COST OF EQUIPMENT
"A school yard planted by a gardener is good if the work can be done in no other way, but the one that best serves its educational value is planted by children, no matter how small the ground or how crude the result. It is in such a garden that moral teaching is ac- complished."— B. T. Galloway.
A small boy in Massachusetts wrote " I took an axe and made the earth fine and with the coal shovel turned all over and over until it was ail mixed together." — Letter to the head of the Children's Department, James Vick's Sons.
"The children cleared up the rubbish and tackled the soil with any old thing they could lay hands on."
THE purpose of this chapter is to give data for a fair estimate when computing an appropriation for a garden; to suggest a possible minimum cost; and to urge beginning a garden on even less where there is a courage- ous, intelligent enthusiast to watch over it. The chapter will also include some consideration of the use and care of tools.
The illustrations of an eighteen cent flower garden show that seeds need not cost much. Government seeds sent upon school requests have been spoken of, but whether the garden is in con- nection with a school or not, it is better not to depend upon such aid entirely; better to have the
1 1 1
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
national government associated in the child's mind as a willing helper in garden work rather than as a lavish provider. Whether seeds shall be provided free or bought by the children, is often a question of local circumstances. Assuming the old maxim "pay as you go" to be a very sound one, the
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Chart of an Eighteen Cent Garden
1. Marigolds
2. Bachelor's Buttons
3. Four o' Clocks
4. Asters
F. Beans
A. Phlox
5. China Pinks
B. Balsam
6. Poppies
7. Zinnias
C. Lettuce
D. Red Beet
E. Peas G. Carrots
penny packet, now put up by a number of garden associations and several of the leading seedsmen, makes both the flower and vegetable seeds for a
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COST OF EQUIPMENT
small garden come within an eager child's dime. His enthusiasm, however, should be backed by intelligent supervision and training. Enthusiasm alone or even with cash will not bring sure re- sults. The teacher must have definite knowl- edge of the needs of plants. In its far reaching results, it is almost a crime to make a child work hard only to have him disappointed because of some fault or error in the garden work which the teacher should have known how to avoid.
Let us then consider some estimates of what a year's work costs. Two expenses loom up in con- nection with the yearly maintenance of every gar- den. They are those for the preparation of the ground, including, of course, plowing and fertiliz- ing, and those for salaries. The cost of seeds, plants and other garden supplies (exclusive of tools) and of the material for nature study, need not be great. Even rental of land is usually not much more than enough to cover its taxes. There remain, as large initial expenses, tools, fencing, some kind of shelter under which to hold classes and conduct work, and the installing of a water supply. Locality, con- dition of soil, size of garden and the measure of its equipment* will all enter into an estimate of its cost. Yet one can perhaps gain some idea to base an estimate upon from the following data.
* Germany suggests that the size of a garden to serve the purpose of instruction be ^ acre: if to include playground, at least J acre.
A garden of | acre (5445 sq. feet) large enough for a country school, may contain perennial and annual flower borders, class, sample and experimental plots, kitchen garden, forest and fruit nursery.
i'3
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Including every expense of the garden and al- lowing for five hundred individual plots, lo x i6 feet, together with a fair number of sample plots, on a tract of three and one-half acres, one of the finest gardens in the country asks from the friends who support it I5.00 per child per season of five months and estimates that the crop from each garden will return I5.00 or more to each gardener in vegetables alone. This garden is in New York state and its staff consists of a superintendent, two assistant teachers, a laborer and two assist- ants whose duty it is to give out the daily record books to the children, sometimes tools, such seeds as they may need, to keep the attendance, and sundry like duties. The National Cash Register Company when its boys' beds were 10 X 170 feet (now they are 10 x 100) figured that for 70 boys the expenses of keeping the land in order, hiring a gardener and making some display of flowers apart from the children's beds was $3500 a year.
A number of the estimates that follow are for gardens already established and used during the spring term of the school year and for perhaps several weeks in the fall. They do not include the initial cost of tools, or even fertilizer.* Toledo, Ohio, aside from the question of salary, figures that a school garden of one acre in extent with 300 indi- vidual plots (2x5 feet or 5 X 6 feet) can be run for six months each year at an annual cost of $25.
* Government seeds may be used in some cases. 114
COST OF EQUIPMENT
The same amount, of which the Canadian govern- ment grants |20, is estimated to cover the running expenses of one (and probably most) of the Macdonald school gardens, having 126 individual plots, 5 X 10 feet, where the principal of the school and the regular teachers conduct the garden work.* Here in the summer, a janitor or laborer has general charge of the garden in connection with his other duties, in South Dakota an estimate of $40 per year, exclusive of salary, is given for a garden where work is done on from 35 to 40 group plots of 10 X 20 feet each. Texas, for gardens of from one to two acres in connection with some of her rural schools, figures the annual cost of maintenance at from |io to I25. Some other estimates, such as one from New Jersey, figure the cost per plot as 30 cents per season and its return as 60 cents. At this rate 350 plots in a half acre lot would make the garden total I105 for the season. Another garden in the same state figures its running expenses for 38 class plots as $5.00 each per season, while an Indiana esti- mate was 1 1. 00 per plot having six square feet. A Connecticut town supports a garden 45 x 80 feet, under volunteer teachers, for I30 per year, giving 20 boys beds large enough to return crops of approximately $4.00 each in value. Stockton, California, in a garden 60 x 1 50 feet with beds 3x12 feet for children of the first, second and
* Fertilizer provided by College of Agriculture. Many of the seeds are grown by the children.
115
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
third grades, estimates the cost at 37I cents per plot. A garden of an acre on the fertile soil of one of our rich western states, which required considerable grading and which paid its instructor 1 1 00 for the vacation work, furnished eight class plots and 90 individual ones at a cost of about I500 for the first year. Its little farms returned from I2.50 to $5.00 each. Another garden in the same state having 400 individual plots, 4x10 feet, and 25 class or sample plots, costs I475 per season, including its proportional part of the salary paid for a regular instructor in agriculture, and also gives from each little plot over $5.00 worth of vegetables. In the less fertile east, I650 covered the cost of 75 plots, 10 X 20 feet, yielding in the second year average crops of $4.00 value.
Here is a detailed estimate for the first year of a school garden, one section of which replaced a rubbish heap on an unsightly vacant lot in a good residential section of an Ohio town. The work required from the instructors was during the hours from 8 to 10 a. m.; and that from children in each division was two to four hours per week. A fee of 25 cents was charged each child. The work was started under the direction of a special teacher, assisted by the grade teachers. It was continued through vacation under the direction of the super- intendent assisted by the janitor, and completed under the direction of the building principal. The garden was divided into four sections: East (individual beds 5 x 24 feet) ; West (7 x 23 feet) ;
1 16
COST OF EQUIPMENT
North (7 X 45 feet.) ; South (9 x 42 feet) . Of these,
the East contained 14 plots, the West 12, the
North 12, and the South lo, making a total of 48
beds. The average age of the children was eleven
years. Premiums, known as the St. Clair prizes,
were given. The net cost of the garden was as
follows:
Plowing I15.00
Taxes or rental 30.00
Seeds and plants 37-oo
Wear and tear on tools. . . . 5.00 (Estimated) incidentals, such as re- moval of trash 4.00
I9 1 .00
Deducting fees paid by the little gardeners, |i i .75, made a net total of I79.25, or a cost per pupil of I1.65.*
* The average per garden, deducting the St. Clair prizes, was I55.05. The average for the pupils in vegetables raised was $4.64. The number of pupils raising less than |io from the garden was nine. These results itemized are as follows:
|
Vegetables sold |
St. Clair prices |
Vegetables used at home |
Winter stored |
|
|
West Garden $70.13 South Garden. .. . 86.29 East Garden 27.96 North Garden. . . . 63.81 |
$44.66 69-49 20.01 39-34 |
I4-75 9.25 1.50 10.00 |
I14-75 5.10 3-45 5.91 |
$5-97 2-45 3.00 8.56 |
|
Total I248.19 |
This garden estimate omits salaries and the cost of tools and fertilizer. An estimate of the latter might be $1.50 per load in most places or 100 pounds commercial fertilizer per 100 plots 5x10 feet. In many cases street sweepings are furnished by the city.
117
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Sometimes, some one interested in school gar- dens, having faith that a first year garden will establish itself as a precedent and win friends to support it with a salaried teacher in succeeding years, can be found to give his or her services as instructor for several days each week. Again, the salary can be divided among several communi- ties, as is now done where a teacher of drawing, or manual training, takes charge of the work in a group of schools or in those of neighboring towns. Frequently, where school gardens are started in connection with schools, the question of salary is disposed of because the work is divided among the teachers. So, too, the need sometimes for a man's strength about the garden can be met by employ- ing the janitor, or hiring a laborer, or utilizing the volunteer help of the larger boys instead of paying a gardener the average salary of |6o per month.
The question of salaries aside, the next most costly items are fencing, preparation of ground, and tools. Where it is necessary to guard against depredation, a fence of some sort, an open fence, is necessary. It should be open, whatever its material, so that the garden can easily be seen and may become an object of interest to the com- munity. A hedge is preferable where it will serve, and is cheaper than an iron fence. While the hedge is growing, there may be guard rails to protect both it and the garden. If these are angular instead of flat or round, the hedge will be safer from the swinging feet or the falls of those
ii8
COST OF EQUIPMENT
who might find the rail a good perch or resting place. There are many low priced wire fences on the market. The cheapest that I have seen and oneThat served well its purpose was a 5 foot woven
Fourth Grade Boys Fixing Fence, Normal School, Louisville, Ky.
wire fence (close mesh for a foot from the ground) stretched on round posts at the corners and gate- way and on half sawed posts between. It cost 6 cents per running foot. This fence is not orna-
1 19
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
mental but it will last for a term of years and has the advantage that it can be set wholly or in part by boy labor. All wire fences when festooned with vines will lose much of their ugliness. A serviceable light iron fence or one with iron posts is desirable and is an excellent investment when the garden site is sure to be permanent. Where feasible, let the fence be low enough for the plants to be easily seen, or even have a top bar for people to comfortably lean upon while they watch the garden.
In regard to tools, in some localities children can be asked at a pinch to furnish them from the home supply, but this is usually unsatisfactory all round. Good tools are expensive, and they must be good whatever their size. For many gardens it is better to get what is known in the trade as ladies' size. They have shorter and slimmer handles which make them easier for the children to grasp. They are not altogether desirable where big boys are working large size plots, but for the average child from the sixth grade to the sixteenth year cultivating a plot from 4x8 feet to lo x 60 feet or even 10 x 100 feet they will do admirably. There should be a few larger tools for general use.
The ideal outfit is a hoe, rake, weeder and line for each child, bearing his own number or name and having its own place in toolhouse or shed or nearby barn or cellar. (Every garden should have its toolhouse even if it be only a chest or box.) Hoe and rake should have five-foot handles
120
COST OF EQUIPMENT
which it is well to mark off by painted lines into feet of which the first shall be divided into halves and quarters.* A longer handle in unskilful hands is likely to ram one's neighbor. Children's tools, except for very little children (and then only if of good make), are valueless. Nor is the combination rake and hoe to be recommended except in handling very light soils. It is too liable to bend or break. Hoes of the heel shape or "half-moon" type are better because they lack sharp, straight edges; with them children are less likely to cut outlying roots or sprawling vines. Rakes should not be over a foot wide; better ten inches with eight or ten teeth so as to move easily between rows planted but a foot apart.
There is one rule which should be vigilantly and eternally and omnipresently enforced: No child should be allowed to lay down hoe or rake except with its edges or teeth resting on the ground. A first lesson in the handling of tools should en- force this rule, it should be shown how easily the handle of either, if accidentally stepped upon, when the tool is not face down to earth, springs up to strike any one nearby — and not always the careless person. It should also be drilled into the children that to step on the sharp edge of the hoe or teeth of the rake is often a painful thing if one wears shoes; that it is a dangerous and some-
* It is better to burn in the marks, wliich may be done by ringing them with several strands of string soaked in kerosene and setting them afire.
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
times a fatal thing if one is barefoot. One little gardener has paid for her carelessness with her life.
Weeders may be had at from 15 to 25 cents. The first are often of cast iron and apt to break. The small weeding forks are excellent and for little children on tiny plots are a sort of universal tool. Garden lines can be made by the boys. This set of tools, hoe, rake, line and weeder, will cost at re- tail from |i.oo to|i.25 for each child. One might also figure on a watering can (preferably with the long spout and rose spray*) for each 10 children where there are 50 or more working together, for all would not need to use them at the same time, and the garden hose could help out. Then, in addi- tion, except for the grand days of preparation in the spring and fall (when more could be borrowed) only a few spades would be needed, one or two spading forks and shovels, an occasional wheel- barrow and a garden tape of steel. Other tools and the use of those mentioned may be considered later. After a garden is once equipped, the ex- pense for repair of tools is slight, and both repair and methods of sharpening should be a part of the instruction among older children.
To make an estimate, the surest way is to figure on the cost apart from the instructor's salary. One might say, " I want so much money to start a gar- den, and also, if we have paid teachers, a reasonable salary such as any fairminded man or assembly of
* See illustration opposite page 231.
COST OF EQUIPMENT
men and women would gladly give for good work." Workers differ, so does the amount of labor, as well as the knowledge required of them. Here is what one writer says of a supervisor:
"She should be a woman that is capable of supervising and directing the work of preparing the ground, laying out the plots and erecting buildings, as she will necessarily have to plan the laying out of the garden and direct both chil- dren and work. Some knowledge of surveying, plowing and drafting is indispensable. Upon the supervisor also falls the duty of engaging workers and the responsibilities of overseeing each step. She must make estimates and pur- chases of seeds and plants, and the whole govern- ment of the practical gardening is to be planned by her. In addition to this, she should give daily nature study talks which must be adapted to the varying ages of the children. As harvesting progresses, accurate records of produce per child, the attendance of said child, and the effect of work upon his physical, mental and moral being must be registered. All of these steps are worth while because gardening (in this country) is yet in its infancy, and because statistics must be obtained with which to convince those who are as yet unwilling to embrace the idea of its merit. Such individual records kept for 250 children to be afterward added, balanced, and the average found, more than fill the teacher's time during the hours in which the children are at school.
123
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
Many interruptions to this work occur, in the form of visiting classes, to which the supervisor explains the work of the garden. To have seeds planted and brought to maturity means an early start to the garden. The proper period for a garden is from May 15 to October 15 in latitudes from Washington to Maine. The work of the supervisor, however, begins the first of May or even in April, with the original planning and plotting and extends until about a week after the garden closes. It is only finished when a record of each day of the summer's work has been com- pleted."*
Such a teacher may get I150 per month or more. She should get at least I125 and probably cannot be obtained for less than |ioo. If she has charge of a system of gardens, that is another matter. Such a one does not come under con- sideration in the cost of starting the first school garden in a locality. f Principals in charge of a garden or under a general supervisor, receive in one city $420, their work during April, May, June and September being from 9 to 12 and 2 to 5.30, while in July and August it is from 8 a. m. to 12.30 p. M. The season is from April 7 to October 7. Their assistants must be graduates of normal schools or colleges of good standing. They work from 3.30 to 5.30 during April, May, June and
* Bennett, H. C: School Gardening in Great Cities, f Supervisors of well organized systems of gardens receive from $1 200 to $2000 for eight to ten months' service.
124
COST OF EQUIPMENT
September, and from 8 to 12.30 during July and August, for I240 per season. Another city pays each principal 1 18 for a period (i. e. three hours' work) for five days each week during the season, and the assistants |i2. In several cities, where few hours are required, a rate of 75 cents per hour is paid or from I2.25 to I4.00 per day. Assistant teachers for all-day work average I65 and I75 per month.
"The assistant teacher, as a rule, is needed only in the afternoons and on Saturdays during spring and fall when the children attend only after school hours; but during the vacation period, she may be needed for half the day or the entire day, ac- cording to the custom of keeping the garden open."*
Evidently the matter of salary is a local one, which each community must adjust to its own needs or purse. Similarly, the question of a gardener or laborer is local; undoubtedly there should be one or the other in every large garden.
"Trained teachers are more valuable than agriculturists without knowledge of pedagogical methods. Teachers not versed in agriculture may be supplemented by a gardener; if, however, teachers do understand gardening, a laborer may take the gardener's place. This man occupies
* An ideal ratio of assistants to children would be one for every seven or at most ten. Twenty or 25 children is the utmost that should be in any one class or division. England forbids her teachers in gardening to have more than 14 children in a class. 10 125
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
an important position in the work; he suppHes the place of a janitor and assists the children in any work that is too heavy for them, such as working up earth with a pickaxe or managing a 50 foot hose. During the early summer and fall when the children are at school most of the day, he acts as a watchman; and during this time, when weeds grow rapidly and the children's hours of work are few, he also assists in keeping the garden clean."
Such a man may be a necessity or a luxury; if the first, count him in your estimate; if a luxury, count him out as far as possible and enlist in the service the helpful, knightly element in your big boys.
If the garden must be started on a small appropriation from the school or park officials or on voluntary subscriptions, and expenses must be cut down to the lowest sum, cut them down in a dignified way; no cut rates or wages, whether for laborer or teacher. Moreover, the reduction would probably have to come on the teacher's salary, because of a lack of appreciation of the required services, and because of union regulation of laborers' wages. "Anybody can dig in a garden" seems to be the popular sentiment. Anybody can dig, but anyone cannot grow plants, nor still more, develop children. No cut rates, but all the voluntary service — if of a good intelligent order — that can be secured. But let the matter be distinctly understood whether
126
COST OF EQUIPMENT
the service is wholly a freewill offering or part is paid and the other given for love of the cause and faith in its demonstrable value. In many places, gardens must start with just such labor. Hence, the main purpose of this chapter is to try to show with how little a school garden can be started; how like the proverbial grain of mustard seed it is in its possibilities of growth and virtue.
Hazelwood Park School Garden, Pittsburgh, Pa.
In computing the cost of a given garden, make a good, sound estimate, one that will cover all details and leave a margin for the unexpected; but if occasion requires, count in the least possible material as necessary, and count out all that could be arranged for, or for which substitution, however inexpensive or humble, could be made.
127
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
For example, land rental might not have to be considered or might be limited to paying taxes where outright loans of the ground could not be obtained. In some localities fertilizer, one of the big expenses, might be contributed by one or more persons as a gift or in preference to a cash contribution. A fence, that other considerable item, may already exist. There must be one. Without it, respect for property and honesty will be difficult to teach; impossible if outsiders be- come vandals. In a crowded city, in a tiny 15x8 foot garden, the boys made their own picket fence for the " Farmers' Club," so determined were those school children at least to make a beginning. If a fence already exists and is of solid boards, rip out some of them so that the public may feel that they are invited to watch the children.
Again with reference to expenses, the needed shelter and toolhouse* may be already provided.
* "One of the most useful accessories to the school garden is the garden shed, which is useful for storing tools and produce, and for carrying on work not suited to the classroom, such as preparing pickets and labels, analyzing soils, assorting seeds, arranging plants, etc. The average cost of the garden sheds (in Canada) is about $75. A popular plan is one 10 x 20 feet with an extension on one side about 5 feet wide, and finished as a greenhouse. This obviates the necessity of having special hot-beds. The garden tools are disposed along the walls of the shed in places numbered to accord with the numbering of the pupils' plots. Along one side of each shed is a bench or table of plain boards, about 18 inches wide, running close to the wall, along which are several small windows giving abundant light to pupils engaged in practical work." — Cowley, R. H.: The Macdonald School Gardens.
128
COST OF EQUIPMENT
Moreover, a large piano box costing |i.oo can be made weatherproof and serviceable for the keeping of tools. A $25 tent can be made to take the place of the more costly portable house. A shelter from the hot sunshine may be a canopy of quickly growing vines.* If a tent is used, it must have a fly or it will be worse than a gridiron in hot weather, and give little protection in storms.
Section of Wooden Pergola
One can, perhaps, get along without a water supply, but sometimes a 4-inch hydrant and hose is almost a necessity. Then again, in many places the water supply is furnished. Tools can be les- sened in number by giving different groups of children one kind of tool to use at a time, and ex-
* Posts driven into the ground and connected by wires to support quick growing vines will form the sides of a shelter that might have a double canvas and rainproof top.
129
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
changing for different ones as their need requires. There may also be some improvised substitutions. Children enjoy making things for real use. If some of the suggested substitutes seem inadequate, try them. Recall how much more enjoyment and benefit there is in the homemade toy or improvised tool provided it does its work well. Moreover, in several well known cases school gardens that nearly failed the first year, when too much of the preparatory work was done for the children, flourished the second year when the same children felt the gardens to be their very own because they had done all the work upon them that they pos- sibly could. Here is another opportunity to lessen the expense of hired labor, particularly in clearing up.* A half dozen children by the use of ropes and crowbar, if wisely directed, can safely accomplish much clearing that might seem to require adult strength. Equipment can be di- vided into fundamental and accessory, limiting the latter according to the amount of nature study, housewifery and elementary science that is to be undertaken in connection with the garden. By substitution, also, one can lessen somewhat the cost of both the fundamental and accessory material.
Let us consider a garden for fifty children. In the first place, if one person is to supervise them,
* Sort the rubbish into piles of different materials. The stones and bricks and rocks may be handy for paving purposes; old wood for carpentry; old cans and bottles for plants and experiments.
130
COST OF EQUIPMENT
the pupils should be divided into at least three sections for class or special work. As soon as convenient, they should be placed under some system of monitors or helpers or sub-instructors drawn from among themselves.* This will lighten the general daily work of the garden.
It may be well to insist that such discipline as is necessary should be almost military. The children like it better, provided the spirit is not that of the martinet, but one of mutual help- fulness expressed in firm, gentle, unyielding yet sympathetic manner. There should be no cod- dling, no pets, no excessive demands upon the child, no injustice through confusing the adult's and the child's point of view. There should be as little of the school atmosphere as possible, but prompt obedience coupled with the utmost pos- sible liberty.
In a first-year garden the individual beds would probably be 4 x 8 feet or 5x10 feet, with none over 10x20 feet. An arrangement could be made to accommodate children of varying ages, and in the following year, the garden could be graded either from the standpoint of size of plot or from that of quantity or quality of work. The amount of fundamental equipment necessary would include first of all, spades, rakes, hoes, weeders, watering cans, and the few other tools already named. An estimate of cost of the most essential tools might read:
* See report of class secretary, page 45
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
I dozen rakes (8 or lo inches wide,
to use easily between rows one
foot apart, and with 8 or lo
teeth of strong malleable iron) . $4.80 per doz. I dozen hoes (Harper's half moon
4 or 5 inch blade) 4.75
I dozen weeders — at 25 cents each
for substantial steel ones 2.50 " "
(weeding irons can be got at 1 5
cents each) 3 watering cans — at I2.00 each 6.00
(Punch the rose holes outward to prevent clogging) 3 spades with foot guards at |i2 per
doz 3.00
Total I21.05
Several of the best gardens allow 50 of the first three tools named to 300 boys (that is, one to six) and find them ample for daily use even where there is an excellent average attendance. This ratio of one to six gives a supply of 1 50 of these tools and there should be in addition some dozen spades, two dozen watering cans and a few other imple- ments to draw upon. Another garden has 40 sets of tools with sometimes 60 boys present. Com- puting in the above ratios for the smaller garden of 50 children, would leave only about a tool apiece should every member be present at the same hour. But it gives a full set of three tools each to every child present, if the children be divided into work-
132
COST OF EQUIPMENT
ing groups of twelve. Work can be arranged so that one group can use the weeder while another has the rake and still another the hoe. But for
Good Tools
comfort, the smaller garden would actually need a proportionately larger number of tools,* so that
* The Canadian estimate is "for each two children in average attendance, a rake, hoe, and hand weeder; for each six a spade or
133
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
it would be better to spend more for these first tools, adding two spades, a half dozen each of rakes and hoes, and several weeders. To con- tinue the estimate:
Low Fuller
Estimate Estimate
For rakes, hoes, weeders . . . .I21.05 I30.33
Wheelbarrow, Boys' size 3.00 3.00
One steel tape, 75 ft 4.75 4.75
25 feet rubber hose 3.00 3.50
50 note books at 2 cents each i.oo i.oo Flag, rollbook, blackboard, hammer, saw, nails, sun- dries 10.00 10.00
50 membership cards 1.50 1.50
Stake and labels 2.00 2.00
3 forks, J dozen trowels, which are $5.00 a doz... 5.50 5.50
Seeds and plants 20.00 25.00
Cord, raffia, etc. (cotton awning line costs 30 cents per lb. 10 lbs. will make 50 garden lines) 3.00 3.00
74.80 89.58
To these must be added as accessory expense at least $5.00 for pans, glass, paper mounts, pins, etc. if any experimental work or insect work is
fork;" and two shovels, three transplanting trowels, 100 foot line and reel, 1 66 foot tape line, a wheelbarrow and lawn mower, would make the cost of tools for a group of thirty children where they work two on a plot (senior and junior) about $30. Cost of seeds about $4. For quantity, see Appendix A, Note 8.
134
COST OF EQUIPMENT
to be undertaken. Further accessory equipment may be obtained by having homemade trellises, root cages, racks for soil testing, flats, homemade barometer, rain gauge, sand boxes for planting (or for the entertainment of the tiny child visitors whom the older "little mothers" sometimes have to bring), rubbish boxes, bed markers, butterfly nets, and numerous other sub- stitutes that save expense.
With small children, in their first year work, or on plots not over 8 X 10 feet, the weeders (also the hoe and rake) can be supplanted in part, or wholly, by the cultivating stick. In the remote districts of Italy, a plow is still frequently only a tough forked limb of a tree pushed or cultivating Stick pulled through the ground. A cultivating stick is merely a piece of soft wood, or lath, one-fourth of an inch thick, one and a half inches wide, and 1 2 inches long, shaped to the hand and pointed at one end, which may be hardened by charring it. Held in the hand like a dagger and thrust into the dry, hard earth until the fingers strike the soil, it cuts each stroke to a uniform depth of between two and three inches and leaves in its wake a fine mulch.* In untrained hands, it is less likely than hoe or weeder to cut or damage
* For this useful substitute, I am indebted to Mr. Henry G. Parsons.
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
the plants, and it is as effective as either in loosen- ing the soil and uprooting the weeds. The child at the end of the short cultivating stick is much nearer to the ground than when using the long- handled tool. He can and will at close range take far more interest in noticing color and form and the differences in both whether in weeds or in plants; for example, the similarities and dissimilarities between the weed purslane and its cousin the flowering portulaca; between the grass blade and the blade of corn; between the redweed and the tiny seedlings of the beet.
The wheelbarrow is for general and large use. For daily weeding in the individual plot, each child, or every two children, may have a basket, or better, a small wooden box (or a soap box cut in two) with hoop handles attached. In this they should carry the weeds from their gardens to the compost heap. In large gardens where the paths are wide enough, children may be taught to bury the weeds, but this custom is better among the older children. The buried weed helps to fill up hollows and supplies humus to the soil when, in the future, paths and plots change places in an occasional rearrangement of the garden.
From lathing can be made large labels, stakes, plot markers, root cages and racks. Two culti- vating sticks can be made for each child, one bearing his name or plot number to stand at the head of his bed when not otherwise needed.
136
COST OF EQUIPMENT
The other, similarly marked, with a hole bored in it, is used to wind the garden line upon, and when not in use should hang in the toolhouse. When the line is used its loose end can be quickly tied to the other cultivating stick. Lines are best made of four-strand braided twine, and should be long enough to go easily around the child's entire plot.* They should not be left out in the weather to rot.
A saving can be made in the matter of seeds, by getting them from the government and by buying penny packets for very small areas. For larger plots, buy in larger quantities and put them up in packets holding enough for each child. Com- pute much more closely than the seedsmen do for general gardening. Seedsmen sell a "nest" of seed measures, but one can calculate the quantity to use by the length of row and distance apart, allowing some margin. A test tube with an elastic band to mark the amount of seed needed can be employed after the amount is learned.
In transplanting, trowels will be found con- venient. Dibbles can be homemade from an old broom or tool handle. Fork and shovel are oc- casionally great conveniences even in a small garden. A hand plow is a luxury. One with several attachments, such as rake and weeder, can be had for from I3.25 up to I7.00 according
* This twine can be bought in bails. If each child is thus pro- vided, only a few of the longer, more expensive garden lines will be needed.
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
to the number of parts. Number all tools so as to keep track of them and of the care the children give them.
In regard to care of tools, every one should be returned to the toolhouse dry and clean. The loose dirt should be wiped off with an old cloth, or better, with a strong brush such as plumbers use. Every particle of dirt between the tines of a fork, the teeth of a rake, along the grooves on the back of the spade, as well as on the handles should be removed. In the fall, before putting them away, any rust should be cleaned off with emery, all handles oiled, and iron parts thoroughly wiped with a cloth smeared with tallow. The tools should then be put away in a dry place for the winter. Linseed oil on handles keeps them mois- ture proof and smooth so that they will not dry out and splinter. The tallow prevents rusting of the metal parts.
The illustration opposite page 171 shows the position of the rake in use. Such grasp of the tool calls into play the most strength with the least effort and avoids fatigue. In hoeing, the un- loosened ground should be attacked from the edge nearest the worker, who should stand in the path. The reason for this is that in so working each stroke cuts a clear, clean slice off the ground in front of the worker leaving a clearly defined line between the soft earth that has been hoed and the hard, unloosened soil. Then there is no danger of skipping parts of the ground as there is
.38
COST OF EQUIPMENT
when hoeing from the center of a bed towards one's self; unhoed portions are frequently cov- ered by the forward pull of the loosened earth.
In any kind of garden, beds are seldom over 10 feet wide, a measure that gives an adult an easy reach in hoeing from either edge to the center and in raking from the center to the edge. This avoids stepping into the bed or upon the loose earth. (Where much hand weeding has to be done, six feet in width is better.) There should be no trampling of spaded earth or mulch. Rak- ing should break the coarser lumps and leave an even, level surface. If necessary, trampling must be avoided by spading or hoeing in sections of a width within easy arm's reach. Follow this by raking the same area and, that section completed, a new one may be begun. In all three operations, hoeing, raking, spading, the work should be done in straight, even lines so that if obliged to leave it suddenly, it will be completed up to the point where left and present a tidy, finished appearance. Section work gives an opportunity for division of labor among groups of children using different tools. Let one gang under their appointed or chosen leader follow the other, as in clearing a lot, spading and raking it.
Spading should be done properly. It then cannot harm, and will delight, the children. Even the smaller ones should be allowed just a few moments of it. But care must be exercised to see that children do not reach the fatigue point
139
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
and that they use both the tool and their muscles properly. The strong, shallow spade is not a crowbar to pry with nor is it a shovel which is made to lift earth from place to place. The spade is to loosen relatively soft earth and to turn it over. To use the spade, start with one hand grasping the top of the handle, the opposite foot
Proper Use of the Spade
on the blade, and the other hand holding the handle a fifth of the way down. The weight of the body should be used to drive the blade its full length into the earth; the hand should be slid down nearly to the blade as you lift and with a light toss ahead completely turn over each spade- ful of soil. When returning the spade for the
140
COST OF EQUIPMENT
next cut, strike lightly with its back the lumps of earth just turned as they are falling to the ground. Straighten the back between each spad- ing and rest a moment. The brief rest saves the stooped back, and avoids the quick oncoming of fatigue. In the work of lifting, depend upon the muscles of the back and legs, feeling the ten- sion to the toes and lifting, as it were, by that. If the blade be turned very slightly when inserted in the earth, the side edge will act as a wedge and carry it in more readily. If hardened earth or a stone be met, moving the spade gently back and forth will give a better purchase and enough leverage to dislodge fair-sized stones. (Later, the principles of the lever may be illustrated and the reasons for so applying muscular strength.) Spading and raking as well as ploughing and har- rowing if properly and thoroughly done are really more beneficial for many soils than the appli- cation of fertilizers.
In using the wheelbarrow, demonstrate that the load piled well to the back is the easier to trundle; also the respective values of the grip close to the barrow and of that nearer to the end of the handles. A substitute for the wheelbarrow is the improvised litter carried between two chil- dren, or they may play they are Indians with the savage drag made of crossed poles tied together.
To sum up: To make an accurate garden esti- mate, or even an approximate one, all conditions must be known. One way to go about it would be
141
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
to make a list of things that must be done and must be had; then to decide how each is to be obtained and estimate the total cost. The list would include:
A teacher, salaried or unsalaried.
Cost of rental of ground.
Preparation of ground, including labor and fer- tilizer.
Tools as per estimate.
Flag, roll-book, blackboard or blackboard-roll (to be hung to post or tree).
Shelter for tools.
Shelter for children. (?)
Seeds and plants.
Water supply.
Sundries, including a few carpenter's tools, as saws, hammer, whetstone, nails, etc., and a small 'Tirst aid to the injured" box to treat accidental cuts or hurts which, however, rarely occur.
142
CHAPTER V
PLANNING AND PLANTING THE GARDEN
CHAPTER V
PLANNING AND PLANTING THE GARDEN
" Begin early, early enough to stir up enthusiasm before it is time to stir up the soil."
"With hand on the spade and heart in the sky, dress the ground and till it."
TO get the best effect of light and to avoid shadows upon the plants, buildings should be placed at the west end, or occasionally at the extreme east if the garden is a part of a park or playground. If this be done, the sun from April to October, after 8 a. m., will strike the plots. The afternoon sun is less scorching and, in foggy regions, the western sunlight is the more important. Consequently, no large trees should be to the west or south of a garden; they should be to the north or east. Where a garden adjoins or is part of a park, if the larger paths are left as broad strips of turf the effect is much more beautiful.
To give crops a good early start, it is desirable that the garden should be on a sunny slope to the south, for such a location will have the advantage over others of giving some 40 per cent more light and warmth. If possible, let the location be
H5
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
decided upon in the fall so that the soil may be examined and carefully prepared for use in the spring. The ground should be fairly even, so that the slope of the lay-out may be either all one way or from one or two central lines or ridges only, as from the top to the bottom, or center to the sides of the garden. Such an arrangement would usually settle the question of surface drainage by the slope and crowning of the paths. If, however, the ground is markedly uneven, it is important to have a system of paths and beds that shall drain it well. If the soil be wet and heavy, it may even be necessary to introduce tiny ditches. If the region be one of scant or infrequent rain- fall, irrigation ditches must be considered. Still, a unity of plan must be kept throughout, and the laying out of both paths and plots subordinated to it. It is impossible to give specific directions for every site. Various plans must be studied for the arrangement of the garden, for its shelter or arbor, its toolhouse and other buildings. Only general suggestions are possible.
A garden should have a name. Bird-houses add a pretty feature, and special guide posts or signs interest the children. Sometimes they like to name the paths and the summer house. Fences, arbors, even trellises for small plants, are best painted green. (It is worth while to buy the very best green paint.) This color wears well and harmonizes with nature's coloring.
A garden plan must provide easy entrance and 146
PLANNING AND PLANTING THE GARDEN
exit. Nearly all designs show some central place for observation of the work carried on in all parts of the garden. This may be either the center of the garden itself for pergola, arbor or shelter, or else some commanding point from which a view of the whole may be had. From such, the plots are laid out in straight lines giving rise to larger
Courtesy oj Nalional Association oj Audubon Societies
A Garden Should have a Bird-box
squares or rectangles, or they may be made to radiate from the center. Rectangular plots are preferable to round ones, as they can be worked more easily from the paths; also because they more readily become component units of a whole. Farmers' Bulletin No. 218 approves a garden plot 5x16 feet as most readily worked without need
147
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
or danger of tramping down the bed. Except in "training gardens" or where there is a graded course of work, children's plots are seldom larger
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5t'f opposite page i ji
Plan of Doan School Garden (Showing Teacher's Table and
Class Bench)
the
than this, and 4x8 feet or 8 x 10 feet is more frequent size.*
* Experienced teachers maintain that children under fourteen should not have plots over lox 15 feet. Small beds tend to waste space by requiring many paths. Dividing a garden into spaces of 5 or 10 feet is frequently easier and, by giving a decimal unit, makes many problems less troublesome for the children to compute.
148
PLANNING AND PLANTING THE GARDEN
Assuming the ground to have been cleared, plowed and harrowed, or spaded and raked for or by these would-be farmers, the teacher should calculate its area, study its possibilities from the aesthetic point of view, and roughly map out her plan. Beginning at the center of the plot or the central point, she should lay out a bed for flowers, or a space sufficient to build the small arbor, pergola or shelter which is to have vines trained and flowers arranged about it. Such shelter might have a circular seat and table to convert it at will into a small classroom for talks or experiments. It will also provide a reception or resting room for visitors to the garden who wish to watch the children or to hear about their work. From this point the main paths 3 to 4 feet wide should extend or should radiate north and south, east and west, and these should be cut by narrower paths running at right angles. These main paths must make every part of the garden easily accessible from the entrance. The lesser paths should be from i to i J feet wide. If the grounds are very large, the few main paths may be 5 feet, those separating sections of the garden 3 feet wide.*
For convenience let us assume that we wish the center of the garden to be also the center of work and interest. To plot the garden, find its
* Paths I foot wide between the individual beds give a more businesshke look which the children prefer, for they enjoy doing things as "grown up farmers" would.
149
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
center, and stretch two garden lines across the whole length due north and south, and two in like manner east and west. Keep these lines always the exact width of the proposed paths apart, say 3 feet. Lay out the central flower bed, or the outlook, with the center of its
□□RHBHDD DDDDDDDn
DDD nDDD D "^ DDDDD DDDQl DDDD
DDDDDD
mnna
rnDDD samn
SSHBD
~ PLAN OF A MODEL CrARDEN-
NUMaED OF PL^TS IN E»CH DIVlSrON-^O i IXEi OF PATHS- /' TO r-fc
base corresponding to the central point of inter- section of these two outlined paths. Then, first on one side and then on the other of each pair of these stretched lines, with the steel garden tape, lay out points corresponding to the width or length of the proposed small gardens, or the
150
PLANNING AND PLANTING THE GARDEN
group gardens if they are to be for children work- ing in groups only. But if the httle gardens, for instance, were 5x8 feet with their rows running north and south so that the moving sun may dis- tribute heat and hght more evenly on the crops than if they were planted from east to west, the points marked off would run along the north and south lines at 8 feet, 3 feet (for path), 8 feet, 3 feet, and so on; and in the east and west directions, at 5 feet, 3 feet, 5 feet, 3 feet, and so on. Mark these points with stakes. These must be carefully set so that each measure of bed or path shall be the exact measure from the outside edge of one stake to the outside edge of the other. From the first, stress must be laid upon this exactness of measure, else the few inches in the width or even the edge of the stake, will throw them, as well as the adult who originally lays out the garden, into confusion, and create irregular, uneven, undesirable lines which will destroy all the symmetry the completed pic- ture should silently and constantly teach.
The actual making of both the paths and the beds may be left to the children. The smaller paths should be staked out. In doing this, stake all those in one direction and then those at right angles. The individual beds to the required num- ber should be set off and numbered plainly by a stake at the center of each plot, facing the head of the garden. A few individual plots may be re- served for the "waiting list," but only a few so as to keep the children keenly eager for them. The 12 151
AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS
remaining beds should be planned both as to location and size, with reference to observation work* and decorative effect. Space must be allowed for a compost heap to be screened by high grasses, grains, or flowers; also for cold frames, if any; for the "weed garden"; and if wise, for both a "model plot," where the planting lesson is illustrated and the "supply plot" from which seedlings may be taken to make good in the children's rows deficiencies for which they are not to blame. Finally, all the measurements should be checked off by the steel tape to ensure absolute correctness. The work may be expedited by an eight-foot strip of wood which can be slipped along the ground beneath the extended lines, while stakes are driven in at the required dis- tances.! (Such a board 8 to lo feet long, another 4 to 8 feet, and another just 2 feet long, marked in feet and half feet, will be found very convenient for garden measurements in planting, transplant- ing, straightening, bounding edges, paths, and for many other purposes.) The advantage of plots laid out from the center of a garden is that any irregular strips of land will be left at the sides and ends where they may be used as sample plots, or to give a finish, as of a rich frame of flowers
* See Appendix A, Note q.
f Particularly in kindergarten work when the board may be made to mark a furrow with its main edge. It may be laid for the children to stand on while planting; and to firm the seeds