r nothing,
and then wheel them to the rubbish heap. Raise as many radishes, lettuces,
and as much endive, and as many kidney-beans, as would serve for ten
families; and finally throw nine-tenths of them away. I once saw not less
than three rods of ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all
bearing _seed_. Seed enough for half a county. They cut a cabbage _here_
and a cabbage _there_, and so let the whole of the piece of ground remain
undug, till the _last_ cabbage be cut. But, after all, the produce, even
in this way, is so great, that it never could be gotten rid of, if the
main part were not _thrown away_. The rubbish heap always receives
four-fifths even of the _eatable_ part of the produce.

138. It is not thus that the market gardeners proceed. Their rubbish heap
consists of little besides mere cabbage stumps. No sooner is one crop _on_
the ground than they settle in their minds what is to follow it. They
_clear as they go_ in taking off a crop, and, as they clear they dig and
plant. The ground is never without seed in it or plants on it. And thus,
in the course of the year, they raise a prodigious bulk of vegetables from
eighty rods of ground. Such vigilance and industry are not to be expected
in a _servant_; for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert himself
for another as much as he will for himself. But if I was situated as one
of the persons is that I have spoken of in Paragraph 137; that is to say,
if I had a garden of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I would
out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vegetables for my family, and
would make it yield enough for a _cow_ besides. I should go a short way to
work with my gardener. I should put _Cottage Economy_ into his hands, and
tell him, that if he could furnish me with vegetables, and my cow with
food, he was my man; and that if he could not, I must get one that could
and would. I am not for making a man toil like a slave; but what would
become of the world, if a well-fed healthy man could exhaust himself in
tilling and cropping and clearing half an acre of ground? I have known
many men _dig_ thirty rods of garden ground in a day; I have, before I was
fourteen, digged twenty rods in a day, for more than ten days
successively; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a man at Portsea,
who digged forty rods in one single day, between daylight and dark. So
that it is no slavish toil that I am here recommending.

KEEPING PIGS.

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