I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening pay? It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying.There is a popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let it alone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not let a man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does not pay.And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular clamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.
As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I know that a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but it is really one of the most expensive.It is true that we can all have front seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do for the opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed are rather dear.Among them I should name a good suit of clothes, including some trifling ornament,--not including back hair for one sex, or the parting of it in the middle for the other.I should add also a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of a fair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in which sensibility and love of beauty grew.What I mean is, that if a man is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beauty undeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him : so that it appears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are as costly as anything in our civilization.
Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world.
You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.Does gardening in a city pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or a trotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or your hair cut.It is as you like it.In a certain sense, it is a sort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set a money-value upon my delight in it.I fear that you could not put it in money.Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, "Is there any taste in the white of an egg?" Suppose there is not! What!
shall I set a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which made the sweet spring a reality? Shall I turn into merchandise the red strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, the sanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did not waste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweet rill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engaging bean in a pool of succotash? Shall I compute in figures what daily freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above ground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in his trial-balance.Yet I yield to public opinion, when Iproceed to make such a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.
I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the cost of gardening, the potato.In my statement, I shall not include the interest on the value of the land.I throw in the land, because it would otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on city land is taxes.I therefore make the following statement of the cost and income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connection with other garden labor.I have tried to make it so as to satisfy the income-tax collector:--Plowing.......................................$0.50Seed..........................................$1.50Manure........................................8.00Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days....6.75Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging, picking up, 5 days at 17 cents...........0.85_____
Total Cost................$17.60
Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, at 2 cents..............................$50.00Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig........50Total return..............$50.50
Balance, profit in cellar......$32.90