HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 241 



now, that is the kind of a place to grow celery in, to compete with 

 Kalamazoo or any other country. It is a crop that cannot be grown 

 successfully on uplands. This man told me that he had put on 

 forty loads of manure to the acre, just spread it right on and worked 

 it in. If it had been a wet season he would have had a ditch, so 

 that he could drain it. That is what you need in cultivating land 

 of that class; you must have ditches so that you can take off the 

 surplus water. The celery was just as white as a hound's tooth. 



Mr. Wilcox. You have described the Kalamazoo land and sys- 

 tem of draining it, exactly. 



Prof. McLain. We grew twenty or twenty-five kinds of celery 

 at the station last year, but it was not much of a success. Our 

 soil is not the kind we need. I know that celery, under such con- 

 ditions, cannot be grown at a profit, and I do not see but that what 

 you have said settles the matter. 



Mr. Allen. Don't they take off two crops a year? 



Pres. Elliot. Yes. We have the advantage that our crops here 

 grow much faster than theirs. There is one other point, and 

 that is in regard to price. Mr. J. F. Heldgrew was competing 

 with Kalamazoo celery all along last summer. While Kalamazoo 

 celery was sold at 16 cents, he was selling his at 35 cents, and was 

 getting 60 cents for his large roots. lie was getting as much for 

 one root as they were for four. 



Mr. Wilcox. In visiting the Kalamazoo beds I was informed 

 that if they could market their celery for 12 cents a dozen, which 

 is about one- third what our celery brings here, they could count 

 on a crop worth five to seven hundred dollars an acre. 



Prof McLain. That same thing applies to the growth of all 

 kinds of vegetables. When I was in KaDsas I was much interested 

 in horticultural work there, and the originator of the Hopkins- 

 variety of strawberry was an old friend of mine. While you 

 might say it was hard for the people of Kansas to compete with 

 the Southern Illinois strawberry growing counties on account of 

 their superior facilities, still Mr. Hopkins took his high priced 

 land, land that was worth a thousand dollars an acre; went down to^ 

 the slaughter houses and got a remarkable fertilizer from the 

 packing houses, and he grew a quality of strawberries that he 

 could get twenty-five cents a quart for, when other strawberry 

 growers were only getting 12 cents. He told me he never sold a. 

 quart of strawberries for less than twenty-five cents. The fresh- 

 ness, crispness and excellence of the fruit that he sent to market, 

 put the Northern grown stuff at a great disadvantage. I mention 

 this because it applies to all vegetables. I do not think that the 



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