32 GARDENING FOE PROFIT. 



three years, but it gradually began to lose effect, and in 

 five years from tbe time we began to use it, it required 

 nearly double the weight of this compost to produce even 

 an average crop. I then abandoned the use of night soil 

 and applied refuse hops instead, at the rate of about 60 

 tons per acre, with marked improvement ; but this was 

 for the first and second years only, the third year showing 

 a falling off. About this time our prejudices against the 

 use of concentrated manures for market gardening began 

 to give way, and at first we applied guano together with 

 manure at the rate of 300 pounds per acre, which we 

 found to pay ; and the next season, guano was used at the 

 rate of 1200 lbs. per acre, with very satisfactory results. 

 Since then, our practice has been a systematic alternation 

 of manures, which I am convinced is of quite as much 

 importance to the production of uniform crops of first 

 quality, as is the alternation of varieties of the different 

 kinds of vegetables. 



It is a grave blunder to attempt to grow vegetable 

 crops, without the use of manures of the various kinds in 

 about the proportions I have named. I never yet saw soil 

 of any kind that had borne a crop of vegetables that 

 would produce as good a crop the next season without the 

 use of manure, no matter how "rich" the soil may be 

 thought to be. An illustration of this came under my 

 observation last season. One of my neighbors, a market 

 gardener of nearly twenty years' experience, and whose 

 grounds have always been a perfect model of productive- 

 ness, had it in prospect to run a sixty-foot street through 

 his grounds ; thinking his land sufficiently rich to carry 

 through a crop of Cabbages, without manure, he thought 



