Part 7 (1/2)
Of course, the box has to be watched and taken in if it turns cold, but it's astonis.h.i.+ng how much can be raised and how much more can be learned out of season by the school desk boxes and the home window sliding boxes.
Try it and see for yourself.
The children can learn as much about some things from a box 2X1 ft.
as they can from a children's garden. Here are a couple of samples of what the kids themselves in a city school think of it.
”DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
_”Office of the Princ.i.p.al of Public School No. 7_
”VAN ALST AVE., ASTORIA, QUEENS
”I inclose a few compositions that were written by some of our boys and girls of the Fourth Year. You will recognize the descriptions of your Garden Trays for cla.s.sroom use Unfortunately the free s.p.a.ce in the cla.s.sroom is limited, so we have found it necessary to allow each pupil only part of a box.
”The children themselves are delighted, as you can see by their compositions.
”Very sincerely yours, (Signed)”
AGNES A. CORDING
”a.s.st. Princ.i.p.al.”
P. S. No. 7
Grade 4 A--April 2l, 1915.
Arthur Miller, Age 10
OUR GARDEN
At first we planted radishes then onions and lettuce and beans and sunflowers. Each one of us have 1/4 of a box. When we had finished that we brought them up to the front of the room and then watered them and went home.
Anna Duerr, Age 8
MY GARDEN
I have a garden. It is a box. I have a quarter of a box for my very own. My garden has five rows. In the first there are radishes, in the second lettuce, in the third onions, in the fourth beans, in the fifth sunflowers. I hope my garden grows up.
Of course these are only preparatory for profitable work. We have cases in which $2000 has been recorded from sales in one year from one acre, and many cases in which at least $1000 worth of produce has been sold from an acre. These are sales, not profits.
Such results are not due to the boundless and fertile soil of the new world nor to small farming alone--they are due to intelligence.
Professor Ronna gives the following figures of crops per acre at Romford (Breton's Farm): 28 tons of potatoes (say 952 bushels), 16 tons of marigold, 105 tons of beets, 110 tons of carrots, 9 to 20 tons of various cabbages, and so on.
It was suggested to the Agricultural Department that it might fix standards of what is a good attainable crop.
On every golf links we have what is called a Bogie score posted up.
That is a score that a certain mythical Captain Bogie, supposed to be an average good player, could make on those links. On one typical club-course, for instance, the Bogie score is 42. Though it has been done in 37, the ordinary player congratulates himself when he gets down to the Bogie score.