Market gardening

“ An acre devoted to general market gardening could be attended to by two men with some extra help for marketing.
To get a place fully established on new, rich land requires two or three years. On worn-out land it would take longer to build it up to the high fertility needed for maximum production. Crops like asparagus and rhubarb take two years to establish on a remunerative basis. If bush fruits are raised, three years are required to get maximum results. ”

“ To lose one’s own money hurts more than to see others lose.
Should the intending market gardener be a free agent, and able to select any part of England for her garden, there are two important matters for her to weigh. Where will be the best market, and what land has the most plentiful supply of water? Probably for the first venture the neighbourhood of a large seaside town, a watering-place or golf links, will be a safer market than London, which is so large and well supplied. ”

“ It is not in price alone that home gardening pays. There is another point: the market gardener has to grow the things that give the biggest yield. He has to sacrifice quality to quantity. You do not. One cannot buy Golden Bantam corn, or Mignonette lettuce, or Gradus peas in most markets. They are top quality, but they do not fill the market crate enough times to the row to pay the commercial grower. If you cannot afford to keep a professional gardener there is only one way to have the best vegetables--grow your own! ”

“ Then, too, land conveniently situated for market-gardening is nearly always costly. Hence the successful market-gardener must plan to secure the largest possible yield from as small an area as is practicable. The largest yield can of course be secured from the richest land. ”

“ We see growing potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes, beans, peas, squashes, turnips, onions, sweet corn, celery, melons, and many other things. Usually all of these will be found in one garden, but sometimes the farmer raises only a few kinds, or perhaps but one.
Market gardening is very common in Germany, Holland, Italy, China, and in other densely populated countries. Therefore we often find people who have come from these countries to America engaged in this business. ”

“ It should be ascertained who the most likely customers will be—schools, boarding-houses, private families, etc., and the garden should be adapted to supply their wants.
Many are the ways of arranging work in a market garden. A lady of ample means can afford to keep an experienced foreman, a large staff, and horses and vans. ”

“ Until the public better appreciates the culinary herbs there will be a comparatively small commercial demand; until the demand is sufficient to make growing herbs profitable upon an extensive scale, market gardeners will devote their land to crops which are sure to pay well; hence the opportunity to grow herbs as an adjunct to gardening is the most likely way that they can be made profitable. ”

“ Prices are moderate in outdoor markets, and nothing else so stimulates in an entire community the gardening instinct, usually confined to a few individuals. The city authorities discovered that the flower market filled a long-felt want. ”

“ No one is willing to pay decent prices. Putting materials in such condition that all the good points speak loudly at first, is one way to attract notice and sell later. If you find you can sell by shipping your goods the same points hold true.
"Another way to make money is to raise young plants for sale. Jack did this with his aster plants. Lots of people wish their garden plants partly started. They either do not have the interest, or else they have not the time for initial work. Asters, stock, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, pepper, celery—all of these may be started for market purposes. ”

“ A market garden is really a big kitchen garden, from which the cultivator supplies not only his own family, but his neighbors, the public. To run a successful market garden for profit, land suitably situated near transportation and markets, a large supply of stable manure, hotbeds for raising plants, crates for shipping, wagons for delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary. You must raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quantities sufficiently large to justify you in giving your whole time to the work. ”

“ The amateur may take lessons from both, but he is not to follow either, for the market system of plant growing is not adapted in all particulars for the private garden. But if you will purchase one of these luxurious plants, you will find that it is in a new pot, and that the soil is sandy, and will not acquire the texture of mud or paste, even when heavily watered. ”

“ I fertilize the land near the trees with stable litter; I would advise its use on thin soil. I pasture my orchard with calves and hogs, and think it advisable; it pays in some orchards. Trees are troubled with borers; I hunt the borers with a wire. We pick carefully in large baskets and sacks from a step-ladder; I pack in barrels. My best market is northwest of here; I sometimes sell in the orchard at wholesale, retail, and peddle; dry and make cider of the culls; never dry for market. I sometimes store a few apples, and find the Winesap, White Winter Pearmain and Rawle's Janet keep the best. ”

“ Our market gardeners understand all this: they do not rest when they have drained the land and regulated the manure, nor do they place their shrubs as close as possible upon the ground. They arrange, judiciously, to give each plant its share of sunlight and of air, and even open out the centres of their trees and bushes to the sun: they cherish health, and, constantly observing nature's laws, they look for multiplied and healthy fruit. ”

“ Nevertheless, the greenhouse-grown vegetables have come into prominence lately because they can be raised in houses that are not good enough for flowers. Lettuce and tomatoes are the principal crops; some growers raise thousands of dollars' worth each year. The greenhouse is also used for forcing plants which are afterwards transplanted to the open air. This develops them at a time when they could not grow outdoors and gives them such a start that they are very early on the market, thereby realizing the highest prices. ”

“ Few farmers have time to do more for a garden than the actual labor of plowing, planting, and cultivating, and digging the root vegetables in the fall. Somebody must watch the garden, go through it nearly every day, poison the cabbage worms and potato bugs, keep the asparagus and cucumbers picked, watch for the maturing of peas and beans, and dispose of any surplus either by canning or sending to market. ”

“ They will pursue no orderly system of agriculture or horticulture, but range from topic to topic, according to the weather and the progress of the weeds, which may drive me from one corner of the garden to the other.
The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners) , but to teach him patience and philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation. ”

“ But of recent years our markets in winter have been so liberally supplied from the Southern States, that, in order to save themselves, our market gardeners have been compelled to take up a fresh line in their business, and renounce the winter frames in favor of greenhouses, and grow crops which many of them did not handle before. ”

“ All are well worked, and an average yield in vegetables and fruit of nearly two shillings a week has been found possible, equivalent to something like £60 an acre—more than twelve times as much food as would be produced if under pasturage. Two professional gardeners, with several men under them, are employed to look after the gardening department, and they are always ready to give any information or advice required by the tenants, so that the cottage gardens may be cultivated to the utmost profit. ”

“ As almost all industries to-day are specialized, so is floriculture; in one place we see ten acres of glass given over to the rose, in another thousands of dollars devoted to the carnation or the violet, while one grower in Queens, Long Island, has 75,000 square feet of glass for carnations.
The specialist who devotes his thoughts and energies to raising one flower can produce better results than if he raised a variety. He has only one crop to market, and can do it more successfully than with a number of crops. ”

“ It wants good free soil, doing best where there is some lime in it. Farm yard refuse and ashes is its best manure. In planting an orchard it is best to arrange the same varieties together and those that will ripen at the same time, so as to save time when gathering the fruit for market. One of the best plans I know of to dispose of one's fruit is on the tree, or as is done on some parts of the Hunter, selling the produce of the trees for the season, then the buyer sends his own men to pick the fruits. An orange tree would sell for a few pounds per year ”

“ In the month of June, large quantities are shipped from the Southern and Middle States to the North and East, where they anticipate from two to three weeks the products of the home-market gardens; the facilities afforded by steam transportation rendering nearly profitless the efforts of gardeners to obtain an early crop. ”

“ When these arrangements are made and faithfully carried into execution during the season, then shall we see good gardens upon our farms; and not only that, but, as a rule, they will be the best paying pieces of land upon the farm, not only in the comfort they give to the family, but in the profit as well.
I do not propose at this time to give you a treatise upon gardening. A few hints that may be of value to those who wish to make some improvement, is all that will be attempted. ”

“ HOW TO RAISE PERENNIAL PLANTS The revival of the old-time hardy garden has become such a craze among fashionable folk that the country woman who desires to add to her income will find growing perennial plants for sale a profitable occupation, provided, remember, that there is a well-to-do community near at hand where she may find a ready market. ”

“ But from the soil of a good garden, with a little pains, we can obtain the finest fruit in existence; and there is no occasion to plant those kinds which are grown for market solely because they are productive, and hard enough to endure carriage for a long distance. The only transportation to be considered is from the garden to the table, and therefore we can make table qualities our chief concern. If our soil is light and sandy, we can raise successfully one class of choice, high-flavored varieties ”

“ But our boys and girls are often at a loss to find ways of earning money. Here is a crop they can gather without danger of trespassing. There is a market for this harvest. Some tree seeds are difficult to get and expensive; red pine for instance. Spruce trees produce seed only once in seven years. This keeps the supply short. In a spruce seed year every seed should be gathered. Pecks of hard maple seeds are swept up by street cleaners every year on our home street. ”

“ In short, a luxuriance approaching to rankness, and a soil remarkable for its depth of colour and fatness, characterize every part. The abundant produce, as is usual through all this neighbourhood, is conveyed to Covent-Garden market in the night, and there disposed of by salesmen that attend on behalf of the gardeners. ”

“ The phenomenal growth of the great consuming centers of the country has stimulated a corresponding growth and extension of the food-producing territory, especially that capable of producing perishable truck crops. The demands for vegetables out of season, followed later by the continuous demand for fresh vegetables throughout the year by the great cities, led first to the market gardeners located near the cities supplementing their field operations by extensive forcing-house enterprises. ”

“ Nearness to market is the most important feature in a greenhouse. In large cities, manure, which is the chief fertilizer, can be had in most cases for the hauling. The short haul is an important item, and, most important of all, the gardener who is near the market can take advantage of high prices, if the grower is near enough to the city to make two or three trips; in such a fluctuating market as New York, it is to his advantage. ”

“ Many acres of land in the colder sections of the country are covered with heated glass houses, and in them during the winter are produced fine crops of tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, cauliflowers, eggplants, and other vegetables. The degree of perfection which these attain in spite of having such artificial culture, and their freshness as compared to the products brought from a great distance, have made winter gardening under glass a very profitable business. But it is a business that calls for the highest skill and the closest attention. ”

“ The opportunities for profitable fruit-and vegetable-growing on the comparatively cheap lands of the east and within easy reach of the great markets, are attracting capital and energy. It is in response to this general demand and these opportune conditions that a winter course in horticulture is offered. The various studies included in this course are intended to help the fruit-grower and gardener to manage his orchards and gardens better than in the past; to fit those who have had some experience for positions of responsibility ”