BANQUET TO GARDENERS. 49 
and its nearness to the market or depot, and the price at 
which fertilizers can be laid down in his intended garden ; 
for he should also know that no soil is good enough to pro- 
duce paying crops for any considerable length of time, 
without the application of plenty of fertilizers, and they 
must be obtained at reasonable rates. If he expects to 
raise very early vegetables, he should select, if possible, a 
light, sandy loam ; as no heavy, stiff clay soil, however rich, 
can be made equal for earliness to a well enriched sandy 
loam. About the time that I commenced building up my 
present business, a bright, active young man commenced 
a market garden about one and a half miles farther from 
town than my own, but upon a heavy clay soil. We were 
competitors for a few years, and always good friends. He 
came to me one day and said that he was going out of 
market gardening. I asked him why, and he replied, 
‘‘ Your soil is from one to two weeks earlier than mine, in 
spite of all the efforts that I can make. This of itself 
gives you the advantage of nearly all the high prices for 
the first early crops. You can get to the market in half 
the time that I must take, and your earlier crops help you 
to control the outside market. The result is, that I can 
only have such customers as you cannot or do not care to 
supply.’”’ 
It will be readily seen that the location and soil are of 
the utmost importance to any one who contemplates start- 
ing amarket garden; as a few days difference in the time 
of putting things on the market, may make the difference 
between a nice profit and barely enough to pay the expense 
of growing, and sometimes not even that. But allowing 
that you have the right location, the best kind of soil, a 
short haul to market, with good roads, with plenty of good 
manure at your command at a living price, what then? 
One of the next things you should know, is when, where 
and how to purchase your seeds and plants. I am by no 
means sure that I am good authority upon this point, for I 
will confess frankly, that I get humbugged and deceived 
