MARKET GARDENING. 95 



As to the value of market garden crops in this State, by 

 the census of 1865 the value was over three millions of dol- 

 lars, I think ; to-day it is double that. 



It does not make so much difference now in resfard to the 

 location as it used to ten or fifteen years ago. Transportation 

 now is so cheap, that if you are twenty miles from Boston or 

 any other large market, you can get j^our vegetables there in 

 an hour, so that a few miles makes but very little difference ; 

 but it makes a great difference with us who are situated near 

 Boston, because our land costs us very dear and land a little 

 further off does not cost so much. Ten acres can be bouo-ht 

 for what we have to pay for one ; and in some cases you can 

 raise just as much on an acre as we can on this high cost 

 land, and of course the difference in the cost of the land and 

 in the taxes is a heavy item. If a man has plenty of money 

 and can afford to buy his land near Boston, he will have some 

 advantages, because he can get to Boston quicker, and by 

 telephone he can get his orders from Boston and find out 

 Avhat the prices are, so as to get his products into market an 

 hour and a half or two hours sooner. 



I work my soil very deep and manure very heavily. I 

 think it pays me to do it. If I had but little manure, I 

 should put it on the top and work it as lightly as I thought 

 the crop required, and take the consequences. My farm was 

 carried on by my fiither for about thirty years, and I have 

 had it for ten or twelve years, and I think it is getting a lit- 

 tle used up. So last year I made up my mind to lay down five 

 or six acres of the old place and hire another place of forty 

 acres. I planted the old place just the same as ever I did ; 

 the dry weather came on, the crops did not come along as 

 soon as I expected, and therefore I did not get a chance to 

 lay it down, so I am just in the same condition now that I 

 was a year ago ; but 1 am going to do it just as soon as pos- 

 sible. I think it would be to the advantage of every market 

 gardener to do so, as I know I can get a better crop on a 

 new piece of ground, provided it is good land, the first and 

 second years, than I can from old land. I took this new 

 place, that had not been ploughed, I think, for thirty years, 

 and cultivated the whole of it, breaking it up last fall, and 

 although I did not raise but one crop on it, nearly every- 



