176 ANNUAL REPORT 



weeds, which in onion culture is of the greatest importance. 

 When the sets have become well rooted we apply a top-dressing 

 of dry wood ashes or of wood ashes and bones, the ashes and 

 bones having been previously packed in barrels and sufficiently 

 moistened with water to reduce the bones to small particles as 

 :fine as if ground. The rains will leach the ashes and set loose 

 such an amount of plant food from the manure that the crop will 

 now be seen to grow exceedingly rapid. Wheel-hoeing and 

 weeding will now be in order until such time as the crop is large 

 enough to market. The pulling, cleaning, tying and marketing 

 will cost five cents per dozen bunches, and we are satisfied that 

 with every convenience for doing this work it can not be done for 

 less. The sets will cost at $5.50 per bushel, ten bushels per acre, 

 $55. 



We have been asked a great many times as to what varieties 

 to plant. The market gardener must raise such varieties as his 

 market demands. The Minneapolis market demands a white 

 onion, therefore we grow almost exclusively the White Portugal 

 with a small quantity of Yellow Strasburg, to come in a few days 

 earlier. 



The sets which we prefer to all others are those grown on the 

 Landreth Jersey farm. The soil there is poor and light manured, 

 if we may call it manure, with Philadelphia coal ashes. The 

 ashes, we presume, are used more for their chemical effect 

 than as a manure. The Cincinnati sets we consider the next 

 best. The sets grown here do fairly well but the Landreth sets 

 invariably produce fewer seed stems and the finest bulb. By the 

 seventeenth of July the crop is generally all marketed. If there 

 should be any probability of not selling the whole crop in the 

 green state we go between the rows with a cultivator and throw 

 a little soil up into the bulbs. This is done as a protection from 

 the hot sun, and if not done the bulbs would quite likely turn 

 green and their market value be very much reduced. 



The onion crop being now cleared off the ground is plowed 

 and prepared for a second crop, which may consist of celery, 

 celeriac, thyme, sage, winter radishes and white turnips. Some- 

 times we have raised an excellent crop of early horn carrots. 



Mr. Terry. I find that sage is the most profitable crop of any- 

 thing I have grown. I have no trouble in selling it at seventy- 

 five cents a pound. That is for the pure leaf, with none of the 

 stalk in it. I have had some experience with onion sets and 

 with strawberries, but they don't compare with sage raising. 



