S6 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



manure to the acre, and selling them at two cents a head. 

 There is a great deal of profit in raising lettuce, if you can 

 sell it for two dollars a dozen ; but the trouble is to find any- 

 body to buy it and pay such a price. As for the question, 

 whether market-gardening is overdone or not, I do not know 

 that it is. Every thing sells, but at very low figures. The 

 price of manure ought to be lower, and the price of labor. 

 I think Mr. Philbrick was very modest in his statement in 

 regard to the amount of capital required in market-garden- 

 ing. I should think it would take a good deal more than he 

 said to carry it on successfully. I think it pays but a very 

 small per cent upon the amount of capital invested. I do 

 not know that it is overdone ; but there is not near so much 

 money made in it as there was a few years ago. The price of 

 manure is too high ; as for patent fertilizers, with me, or any 

 man whom I have ever seen, they do not amount to any thing. 

 I have spent considerable money on them ; I have read the 

 certificates of men in whom I have great confidence as 

 men of intelligence, successful men, men who commenced 

 with nothing, whose fathers did not leave them a farm or 

 give them one, but they commenced poor men, and have 

 worked and earned for themselves good farms, — I have read 

 the certificates of such men, that they have applied such 

 and such patent fertilizers, and have secured good crops ; but 

 I see that their manure-teams still continue to go on the 

 road ; they do not give up any of their stables ; and I cannot 

 buy manure for any less than I could years ago. I do not 

 believe that any of them have given up a single stable, and 

 used patent fertilizers instead. 



Mr. Murray. I never knew such a thing as a spinach- 

 house in my young days. I used to be very successful 

 in preserving spinach through the winter, but not in the 

 mode that is recommended here. I used to prepare, about 

 the 1st of August, a number of cold-frames ; and I had a very 

 rich compost prepared, — one-half manure with decaj^ed oak- 

 leaves, — and I used to fill my cold-frames with that compost ; 

 and about the middle of August I would sow my spinach, 

 the broad-leaved variety. I used to get an enormous growth : 

 every leaf would be nearly as big as an early cabbage-leaf. 

 I used a little of it in the fall, but always kept a very heavy 

 crop until winter. I waited until the dry frosts set in ; and 



