122 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



dens of our farmers, and what do you see ? Take asparagus, 

 for instance, — one of the most healthy esculents we have. If 

 you see it at all, you will see it in a little bed about as big as a 

 common door-mat, when it requires a space twelve feet wide 

 by fifty or a hundred deep, in order to obtain a sufficient sup- 

 ply for a family. So it is with many of the most delicate veg- 

 etables, which farmers ought to have, but which, if they raise 

 at all, they send the crop to market, and live themselves entirely 

 upon potatoes and cabbage. 



Now, in regard to raising vegetables for the market, we all 

 know that it requires a peculiar soil to raise early vegetables, 

 and that, as a general thing, it requires a different kind of 

 labor from that which is ordinarily used on our farms. You 

 can get a Yankee farmer to do almost anything, if you will 

 allow him to do it with a horse or a pair of oxen, but when you 

 invite him to come down and put his muscles behind a shovel 

 or a spade, he is very apt to shrink from it. There are very 

 few men who like to spade up a garden or to trench it, when 

 they can take a pair of oxen or horses and plough it up ; and 

 that is one great reason why our farmers' gardens are not as 

 they should be. In the first place, as Col. Waring emphat- 

 ically told you, your garden must be thoroughly drained. You 

 cannot raise good vegetables upon wet land, and especially 

 deep-rooted vegetables. Your land must be thoroughly drained 

 and ploughed deep, so that they can reach down as low as they 

 want to go ; and if the theory of the geologists and natural 

 scientists is true, that the lower you go down the warmer the 

 earth is, as the lower regions are only a few thousand miles 

 below us, of course, the longer your roots are, the nearer 

 they approach the everlasting fires, and the warmer they get. 

 I suppose the theory of our friend, Mr. Greeley, about deep 

 ploughing, is based upon that. However that may be, our gar- 

 dens, as I said, must be thoroughly drained, and of course that 

 must be by tiles. You cannot underdrain a garden by stone. 

 You want your tile low enough, so that you can plough deep 

 and get the soil in proper condition. The next question is, 

 what kind of manure you shall use. If you are planting corn, 

 you can use coarse manure, because a gross feeder like that 

 will take up anything ; but for delicate vegetables, those which 

 you want to drive forward, so as to make them mature early, 



