No. 5. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 229 



Yoli have to start on schedule time. No matter how cold and incle- 

 ment the weather is, or how late the frost, you must start in time, 

 no matter whether you are going to use a greenhouse or a hotbed. On 

 tie first of March I was snowed in in Berks county, but when the 

 proper time came the plants had to be transferred to the garden- 

 When the proper time comes to gather the crop, Nature usually fa- 

 vors the man who got his plants out at the proper time, and the man 

 who failed to do so is the man who says farming doesn't pay. 



Two things the market gardener must bear in mind are: First, 

 earliness ; second, volume of crop. In a measure, it is practically im- 

 possible to get a maximum crop with extreme earliness. It is al- 

 most impossible because of the conditions. Nevertheless 60 per cent, 

 to 75 per cent, of a maximum crop will pay the farmer better in the 

 long run than 100 per cent, to 115 per 'cent, crop later on. Take 

 tomatoes, for instance. The first tomatoes in the market usually 

 run .f4.50, then |3.50, f2.50, and finally come down to 75c or 50c, and 

 you can readily realize that when a fellow is two weeks behind, he 

 cannot get the price. I went through my early tomato field the 

 day before I started for here. The object of the tomato grower is 

 to get them into full bloom before they get into pollen ; if you set them 

 out before that, the blossoms will fall off'. More than half of these 

 plants have on two, three, four or five little tomatoes. Now that 

 plant is loaded for work, and the fertilizer can be handled alto- 

 gether different from what it would be provided there is no fruit 

 there. Now, if there were no fruit there, and the farmer gave it a 

 liberal application of soluable plant food, it would go into leaf and 

 vine, and it would be some weeks before it would come to fruit. When 

 the fruit is on the vine, the plant is trying to do double duty, and 

 we can afford to put on fertilizer quite liberally. Now we can begin 

 to grow quantity so far as it is consistent with earliness. 



The next thing we want is quantity, and with that we want 

 sweetness, succulence, palatability. The only way you can get that 

 is by feeding. Yesterday morning I was very much interested in 

 hearing about soil fertility, and I can subscribe to everything that 

 was said, and I am going to put this much emphaisis on one of the 

 points that was used. We can use all the manure that the farmers 

 of Pennsylvania can get right on our green crops, and then make a 

 failure unless we have water. Ninety per cent. — yes, 98 per cent, of 

 the crops we grow — tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, etc., are all water; 

 and we are only giving two tons of dry matter to a ton of water in 

 strawberries. But you take a good, clean, pretty berry and put it 

 where the passerby can see it, and nine times out of ten he will halt 

 and look at it, and once he halts to look at that box of berries, he is 

 lost, and he buys it and takes it home; it appeals to his eye; but if 

 the sweetness is not there, you will have hard work to sell him 

 again. With the cantaloupe it is somewhat different. He cuts in it 

 with his knife, and if the palatability — the flavor is not there, he will 

 not buy it. There is nothing to attract the eye, in the first place. 

 When you go to market you have to have palatalDility — eating quality, 

 and that can only be gotten by feeding, and sunshine. What is the 

 reason that Rocky Ford, Colorado, grows a better cantaloupe than 

 we can grow in New Jersey? It is because they have ten days of 

 sunshine in a week, while we have only three or four. You fellows 

 are laughing, but that sunshine out there does not belong to the 



