Perhaps a more fruitful source
of failure even than the lack of loam was the attempt to
apply calculation and mathematics to gardening. Thus, if
one cabbage will grow in one square foot of ground, how
many cabbages will grow in ten square feet of ground?
Ten? Not at all. The answer is _one_. You will find as
a matter of practical experience that however many cabbages
you plant in a garden plot there will be only _one_ that
will really grow. This you will presently come to speak
of as _the _cabbage. Beside it all the others (till the
caterpillars finally finish their existence) will look
but poor, lean things. But _the_ cabbage will be a source
of pride and an object of display to visitors; in fact
it would ultimately have grown to be a _real_ cabbage,
such as you buy for ten cents at any market, were it not
that you inevitably cut it and eat it when it is still
only half-grown.
This always happens to the one cabbage that is of decent
size, and to the one tomato that shows signs of turning
red (it is really a feeble green-pink), and to the only
melon that might have lived to ripen. They get eaten. No
one but a practised professional gardener can live and
sleep beside a melon three-quarters ripe and a cabbage
two-thirds grown without going out and tearing it off
the stem.
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