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Show Chinese Gardening If one has only limited space for planting a garden (and it's estimated 38 million households house-holds had gardens last year), Chinese-style gardening may merit attention. AS MORE and more Americans Amer-icans congregate in surburban and metropolitan areas, and the nation becomes less rural in population makeup, many families find they have only minimum space for gardens. The Chinese, now numbering number-ing about a billion, have confronted con-fronted more stringent space limitations for centuries. They've reacted by planting raised-row gardens. THE ROWS are four or five feet wide, raised about eight inches from ground level. Much of the dirt for this is dug or spaded away from the walkways between these raised rows, to which is added mulch, fertilizer, etc. The system sys-tem is to plant short rows of vegetables or flowers, not long rows. PLANTS can be more closely close-ly spaced because they're heavily fertilized. They are easier to weed because they're a foot or more above walkway level. Americans spend an estimated esti-mated $2.5 billion a year on gardening supplies, to produce about $18 billion worth of food. THIS YEAR will be a bumper bum-per gardening year because of untimely freezes in California, which will limit the supply of some vegetables and make many more expensive. So if one is no already using a tiller, in a sizeable garden, the Chinese method for smaller smal-ler plots might be worth a try. THERE ARE also more and more roof gardens, basket plantings and even newly-developed newly-developed bushes, such as a cantaloupe bush, to interest those with limited planting areas. |