PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 49 



Michigan, over the gardeners close about Chicago. They have to haul 

 their product sixteen miles, getting up very early and working hard to 

 make ready their loads. We get ready the day before, send the goods in 

 the night, and are preparing our next shipment while they are waiting to 

 sell their loads. We grow no celery to speak of, here, though there is a 

 great marsh near the city. None of it is utilized. Some celery has been 

 grown, however, and it was free from rust. The marsh is a gold mine for 

 celery growing, but the business men are trying to get it covered with 

 factories. Some onions, lettuce, radishes, etc., are produced, especially 

 onions, and last spring we got $4 per bushel crate for bunch onions. There 

 is a large acreage in preparation for this spring, of these crops, which will 

 be increased hereafter. The tomato worm is becoming a serious pest, on 

 potatoes as well as tomatoes, and we have to fight for both. Arsenical 

 spraying may be effectual. The trucker has to work harder than the fruit- 

 grower, and perhaps for less money. Tomato rot troubles some, but we 

 have never done anything for it. Only the fruit from the early settings 

 rots, and I know of no help for it. In planting cucumbers we plow the 

 ground finely, using a single plow, putting the manure into the furrows, 

 and then harrowing, drill in the seed, leaving the plants fifteen inches 

 apart. We use pyrethrum, sulphur, and tobacco for the striped bugs. 

 We can compete with any place in the country even with greenhouse 

 vegetables. Mr. Budlong of Chicago, a hothouse vegetable grower, says 

 the men of his kind have the market till the open-planted product from 

 the south arrives. 



WRONGFULNESS OF SECRET METHODS. 



It was noticed that the speaker was very chary about giving knowledge 

 of his methods, and when asked about them he frankly declined to " give 

 away the secrets of his business," and said he noticed Mr. Brown had 

 carefully avoided telling anything of the sort in his paper; and he 

 instanced Mr. Morrill's free gift of his processes in originating and 

 growing the Osage muskmelon as an example of what a grower should 

 not do in this matter. 



Mr. W. A Brown: For all the secretiveness of some of our people, 

 this is becoming known as a horticultural region in the broadest sense of 

 term. One of our factories consumes the daily product of 1,000 acres of 

 cucumbers. The whole volume of our product is much greater than is 

 commonly supposed. We can get no sta{istics of shipments from the 

 principal boat line, because the owners do not care to have it known how 

 much money they make. 

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