SOME THOUGHTS ON GARDENING. 381 



nigger's did when he fell in the barrel of lard. And when I 

 came to dig them in the fall, from that one peck I planted 

 there I had eleven bushels of as nice potatoes as you ever 

 laid eyes on — and if those coal ashes did not help them just tell 

 me what did? Now I will tell you another thing. I wanted 

 some early potatoes to plant, and I finally found a man who 

 had some sort that he claimed were good, and I guess they 

 were sprouted a foot long, but I got them and paid a dollar a 

 bushel for them — and I had a piece of ground that I covered 

 over thick with leaves from maple trees. When I was in town 

 and saw a man raking up his yard, I would get the leaves and 

 haul them home, and then I would cover the ground thick with 

 leaves and put coal ashes all over. I plowed that stuff under 

 I took pretty good care of the potatoes, and when I came to dig 

 them in the fall I found I had forty bushels and three pecks 

 from that one bushel. About that time I met a man, and we 

 were talking about potatoes, and he says, "Just come out to 

 Dakota if you want to raise potatoes." And I says to him, 

 "Just you come out here." I showed him the potatoes I had 

 raised, and he said, "By gosh! That beats Dakota." Now, if 

 coal ashes ain't good for anything, I don't understand what 

 made those potatoes turn out like that. 



Some one wanted to know how it was I had such good luck 

 with tomatoes. In the first place I make a hotbed. I pile up 

 about three or four feet of manure, and then I put on, say, four 

 inches of soil. And if I get in a hurry, and the manure doesn't 

 heat, it don't worry me a bit; I just heat a few kettles full of 

 water, and I stick a funnel in the manure and pour that hot 

 water in, and the bed is not long in getting up a good heat. I 

 plant my tomato seed in that hotbed, and after they are about 

 four inches high I reset them in a cold frame. That is a sort 

 of a hotbed anyway; I put manure in the bottom. I leave them 

 in there until the plants get about eight or ten inches high. I 

 take them out again, and by that time they have pretty good 

 roots on, and I make a bed right on the ground and transplant 

 them again, and when I get ready to set them out they have 

 small buds on. I put out four rows across the garden three 

 rods long, and they were all out in blossom, and one night it 

 looked as though it was going to be pretty cold, so I got a lot 

 of old stumps and things together and made a little smudge. 

 Where I got hold of that was down in New Jersey. One year 

 there was a man there that had a very fine peach orchard; he 

 thought it was getting pretty cold, and he went to town to a 



