May 1. 1912 



another instance where a rank neglected 

 weed is found to be a valuable vegetable; 

 and I can distinctly remember the time 

 when the tomato was thought unfit for food. 

 Some people called it poison; and on look- 

 ing up pokeweed in the dictionary I found, 

 before the definition, a statement of its be- 

 ing sometimes considered poison. 



Now, the other discovery is that it doesn't 

 pay to fuss with old lamp-burners. In the 

 poultry journals we are often told that it is 

 advisable to boil them out in salsoda and 

 water. Well, Mrs. Root had been spending 

 a good deal of time in cleaning lamp chim- 

 neys, and had several times suggested that 

 perhaps our oil was poor. But when we 

 threw away the old lamp-burner and bought 

 a new one that cost only ten cents we were 

 agreeably surprised to find not only a much 

 better light, but all of our troubles with 

 cleaning lamp chhnneys had disappeared, 

 or pretty much all of them. Don't fuss with 

 old burners. Of course, we have electricity 

 in our home; but it is not put on until four 

 o'clock P.M., and is turned ofif at twelve at 

 night. If you get up after midnight or 

 early in the morning you have to use a 

 lamp. Jn fact, the only time I can use this 

 dictaphone is after four in the afternoon or 

 before midnight. 



BUCKWHEAT IN THE FLORIDA SAND, ETC. 



Some things will grow here in this Flori- 

 da soil, while others will not. People from 

 the North have many times been disap- 

 pointed when they came to make garden 

 and grow stuff down here. A short time 

 ago our neighbor, Mr. Stanton, suggested 

 that buckwheat takes kindly to the Florida 

 soil. I sent for some samples from our 

 home, and we were very agreeably surprised 

 to see the buckwheat come up very quickly 

 without any fertilizer of any account. It is 

 now covered with bloom. I do not know 

 that it would pay to raise buckwheat here 

 for grain — probably not for seed; but chick- 

 ens and ducks eat it with great avidity, and 

 do their own harvesting and thrashing. 



Another thing that seems to flourish in 

 our Florida soil is the soy or soja bean. 

 Chickens and ducks eat these almost the 

 same as they eat green lettuce. Wild rab- 

 bits also have discovered their nourishing 

 properties. 



Rabbits in our neighborhood seem to be 

 quite a pest. They can be fenced off with a 

 two-foot poultry netting. The netting needs 

 to be as small as inch mesh, however, for 

 the young rabbits have a fashion of getting 

 through the two-inch mesh with great facil- 

 ity. The past winter we have had no frost 

 to do any damage worth mentioning, ex- 

 cept that our sweet-potato vines were killed 

 down and the bians and corn nipped, but 

 started up again. Notwithstanding, 1 have 

 had a very good crop of Red Bliss or Triumph 

 potatoes, and they grew and matured in a 

 surprisingly short space of time. 



Irish ])otatoes have been all winter from 

 fifty to sixty cents a peck. Our neighbor to 

 the north has a beautiful lot of potatoes — 



28d 



about half an acre in extent — that seemed 

 to be so little affected by the Florida hot 

 weather that I asked him what fertilizer 

 and how much he used for growing such 

 luxuriant vines that stood up and kept their 

 color so handsomely. The reply was that 

 he not only used a potato fertilizer pretty 

 liberally (toward a ton to the acre), but he 

 also put on a pretty good dressing of stable 

 manure from the livery stable, paying three 

 dollars per load for it, delivered on the 

 ground. Some of our friends in the North 

 would think this pretty extravagant manur- 

 ing; but when you come to realize that he 

 will probably get more than two dollars per 

 bushel for his crop, it is not such a very bad 

 investment after all. Our neighbor, Mr. 

 Rood, is still making "big money" from 

 celery and strawberries. They have had 40 

 cts. a quart during a great part of the win- 

 ter for their berries. They are now down, 

 however, to 25 cts. People are buying them 

 quite liberally, and almost every day you 

 see people going along with their hands full 

 of baskets of strawberries for which they 

 have paid 25 or 30 cts. a quart. 



There has been considerable said about 

 the amount of fertilizer required to grow 

 any thing here in Florida. Neighbor Rood 

 probably uses it as liberally as any one. On 

 some of his big crops he has probably used 

 two or even three tons of fertilizer to the 

 acre that cost something like forty dollars a 

 ton. Below I enclose a clipping from the 

 Manatee River Journal for March 21: 



Mr. E. B. Rood cut celery this week which will 

 average easily eight hundred crates to the acre. At 

 the present f. o. b. selling prices the net cash yield 

 of this crop will be about §2200 per acre. 



Perhaps not all celery-growers have done 

 as well as this; in fact, only a few of them, 

 I suppose. Yet as a rule they have been 

 doing unusually well during the past win- 

 ter because of the high prices. I might 

 mention that one car of Mr. Rood's celery 

 went to Omaha; and another, which went 

 off just a few days ago, went to some place 

 in Canada. I don't know why it is that 

 people pay such big prices for Florida celery 

 unless it is because it has been found bene- 

 ficial to the health. Celery is to the human 

 family something like what lettuce is for 

 ducks and chickens, esi)ecially in the winter 

 time. Mr. Rood not only uses heavy quan- 

 tities of fertilizer, but he has his ground 

 thoroughly underdrained to take away all 

 excess of moisture. On the other hand he 

 has an artesian well to furnish water, 

 through these same tiles, whenever there is 

 a drouth. 



POTATOES IN YOUR BACK YARD; A SHORT 

 CUT FROM "PRODUCER TO CONSUMER." 



I fear our department of High-pressure 

 Gardening has been rather neglected; but 

 right now (as soon as your eye catches these 

 words) is just the time to wake up. I see 

 potatoes are quoted in the Cleveland papers 

 at $1.50 per bushel, and old potatoes at that. 

 New ones from Florida are $2.00 or more; 

 and you who buy by the peck or half-peck 



