MARKET GARDENING. 107 



Boston for his vegetables than he would have got if it had 

 been wet ; for if it had been wet', and everything had grown 

 luxuriantly, as it started to grow, you could not have given 

 away all the stuff that would have been raised this year. 

 The market was hardly short of anything. I have driven 

 to market for over thirty years. We used once in a while to 

 say that we had got a corner on something ; but I tell you 

 that the corners are rounded oflF smooth now, and they are 

 very hard to find. There is enough of everything all the 

 time. 



Mr. Moore talked about putting the manure upon the land 

 in a condition for the little plant to feed upon it at once. In 

 my judgment, the little plant when it is small does not want 

 a great deal of this food. There is enough in almost any or- 

 dinary land to feed it until it begins to draw : then is the 

 time that it wants food. I will state one case. I took a 

 piece of this land that was ploughed over in the fall. I put 

 on some slaughter-house manure. I spread it on the ground, 

 and ploughed it in. I sowed radishes on that piece, and I 

 never saw such a crop : they would measure fifteen inches in 

 length. That didn't show that they wanted that extra food, 

 fqr I will be bound to say that that ground had not had 

 manure for five years. Then I planted sweet melons on the 

 same piece. I hoed them the 13th day of July, when they 

 were not more than four inches high. They took a start 

 then and did better than any sweet melons I ever raised. 

 That teaches me that the small plant does not want this very 

 fine nutriment to work on. There is enough in any natural 

 earth to feed the plant until it begins to draw ; then it wants 

 something to feed upon. 



Mr. E. M. Pierce of Waltham. I am a market gardener 

 and have succeeded in making a living up to the present 

 time. I do not think that market gardening is anything like 

 what it used to be. I think that the telephone and telegraph 

 have rounded ofi" the corners that Mr. Rawson spoke about 

 thoroughly. If there are no onions in the country, and the 

 farmers think they will hold them for a larger price, the 

 dealers telegraph to Spain and in twenty days they will get 

 a cargo in New York and the price will go down from $5 a 

 barrel to $1.75. We thought the other day that there was a 



