Skills (1942) The City Home Garden

Farmers' Bulletin No. 1044; W.R. Beattie; USDA; 1942

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The City Home Garden — USDA Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1044 (Revised 1942)
Practical, time-tested guidance for growing fresh vegetables in small urban spaces. This classic USDA bulletin, revised in 1942 by W. R. Beattie, shows how to plan, plant, and maintain a productive city garden — whether in a backyard, vacant lot, or community plot. It covers soil preparation, composting, tools, planting calendars by frost zone, and strategies for working with limited light, space, and resources.

What’s inside:

• Advice on locating and designing an urban garden for maximum sun and drainage.

• Step-by-step soil preparation, composting, liming, and fertilizer use.

• Planting charts and frost-zone maps for spring and fall crops.

• Directions for starting seeds indoors, using hotbeds and coldframes, and hardening plants.

• Crop-by-crop instructions for beans, root vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, onions, cabbage family, greens, and salad plants.

• Tips for space-heavy crops (potatoes, corn, melons, squash) and ways to adapt them to smaller plots.

• Guidance on watering, cultivating, pest management, and succession planting for continuous harvests.