1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



323 



have any spite toward our vegetarian friends. If 

 you can live and be strong and well on a purely 

 vegetable diet, by all means do so. Mrs. Root 

 and I ate but very little meat while in Florida; 

 but we had beautiful fresh fish right at our door 

 once a week or oftener, and, of course, eggs ga- 

 lore. 



Later. — It is now May 6, and my craving for 

 lean meat seems to have let up; and my shredded 

 biscuit or puffed wheat, graham bread, Battle 

 Creek graham crackers, or even Terry's raw 

 wheat, seems to be what nature demands. May 

 be you will think I change my mind a good deal; 

 but just now a vegetarian diet seems to be what 

 nature calls for — just about what it has been for 

 several years past. Where one can get along and 

 feel well on a diet of grain and fruit, I do think 

 it is preferable in a good many ways. But make 

 the choice as nearly as you can (as we have it 

 in Fletcherism)for what nature seems to call for, 

 and chew it well, and do not eat too much. 

 With the emphasis that is now being put on the 

 matter of chewing food a long while, I think the 

 world is going to come up to a higher plane, not 

 only in the way of health, but in the way of en- 

 joying our meals and the " daily bread " right 

 from God's own hand. 



HIGH-PRESSURE 

 GARDENING 



By A. I. Root 



HIGH-PRESSURE GARDENING IN MANATEE CO., 

 FLORIDA. 



In Gleanings for May 1, 1908, I gave you 

 some pictures of celery-growing in Florida, and 

 I told you also, on page 160, Feb. 1, 1*^08, of the 

 thirty acres equipped with the Skinner sprinkling 

 system. During the past season, fine crops, per- 

 haps finer than were ever grown before, were har- 

 vested in Manatee Co., and throughout that re- 

 gion, and shipped north. Owing to a rather se- 

 vere freeze in the northern part of the State, 

 much better prices were realized by the success- 

 ful gardeners in our own locality. Lettuce, cel- 

 ery,-peppers, beans, cabbage, and almost every 

 thing else, sold at figures that made the growers 

 happy. See the clipping below, from the March 

 issue of the Manatee River Journal, of Braden- 

 town, Florida: 



CELKRV SELLING LIKE HOT CAKES. 



The celery-erowers are just now the happiest men in all Flori- 

 da. Their bank accounts are growing by leaps and bounds. 

 The present crop is one of the best ever grown in this section, 

 and the prices are equally good. $2.00 per crate f. o. b. being the 

 standard, with an occasional $2.25 for all fancy stock. 



The Jturnal rejoices over the good fortune of these people, 

 who deserve all that is coming to them now, as celery-growing 

 is by no means child's play, but a business which requires work, 

 and lots of it, with the exercise of judgment and common sense 

 in its culture. 



Not only were the white people successful, 

 but quite a good many colored men who have 

 small gardens received prices for their shipments 

 that almost took away their breath; and they did 

 not go and get drunk over it either, for Manatee 

 Co. is a dry one, and always has been; and, God 

 helping us, it always will be. 



In my own little home, where we have just 

 one acre of ground, there was no frost or freeze 



to injure the most tender vegetables. Our pota- 

 toes were not even touched. There was 3i freeze, 

 however, that did more or less damage to tender 

 stuff in several localities, some of them not more 

 than a quarter of a mile from my own home. 

 Frost and freezes in Southern Florida seem to 

 touch occasionally in spots here and there. I pre- 

 sume air drainage, protection of trees, etc., have 

 much to do with it. My place is on a piece of 

 sloping ground that runs down to the water, and 

 both air and water have a good chance to run 

 down hill. Besides that, all along the north side 

 there is a heavy wild undergrowth quite thickly 

 interspersed with pine-trees. This not only af- 

 fords protection, but seems to have quite an in- 

 fluence in warding off frost. 



Before you get crazy about going to Florida 

 to raise garden-stuff, I want to tell you that there 

 are perhaps a dozen failures to one real success, 

 and I do Hot know but there are a thousand acres 

 of land, yielding absolutely nothing, unless it is 

 a little pasture, to where there is one acre that is 

 giving a paying crop. There are lots of people 

 who have excellent land and good opportunities, 

 but their gardening is done in such a feeble way 

 that it amounts to nothing, or almost that. 

 Then there are others who come from the North, 

 who, instead of going around among their neigh- 

 bors, and finding out how the successful men 

 work, just stay at home and try to raise stuff the 

 way they did when they lived in Ohio, perhaps, 

 in their boyhood. 



Now, while I tell you what I am going to tell, 

 just keep the above in mind. Before going any 

 further, however, I wish to say a word about the 

 sprinkling system to keep off frost. The men 

 who control the Skinner patent have much to say 

 about the efficiency of this artificial rain, or spray- 

 ing, to protect from frost; and I supposed until 

 last winter that it was really a success in that 

 line. A neighbor of mine had ten acres under 

 the Skinner overhead sprinkling system. He had 

 a fine crop of peppers, and made a few shipments, 

 getting high prices for his peppers, as his were al- 

 most the only ones in the market. Well, we did 

 not have a frost — it was, rather, a freeze. There 

 was a high wind, and I think we had cloudy 

 weather. To protect the peppers he kept his en- 

 gine running all night, keeping the ground and 

 the plants drenched with water and the air full of 

 spray. Finally it began to get so cold that ice 

 formed on the leaves of the plants, and pretty soon 

 they were bent down under their load of ice. I 

 think the spraying was continued until it warmed 

 up the next day, when the ice melted off. But the 

 plants that were not reached by the sprinklers at 

 all stood the frost very much better. If I remem- 

 ber correctly, some of the plants that were loaded 

 down with ice recovered so as to give part of a 

 crop; but I think the crop was not of much value. 

 I visited a tomato-field under the sprinkling-sys- 

 tem at St. Petersburg, Fla. , where the report was 

 just about the same. Some of the tomatoes were 

 ripe, and almost ready to gather. They kept 

 them drenched with water until the load of ice 

 pulled them down to the ground; but the toma- 

 to-plants that were outside of the reach of the 

 sprinklers were harmed very much less. In both 

 cases, had they not relied on sprinklers to protect 

 from frost they could have gathered quite a valu- 

 able lot of peppers and tomatoes also. 



