MARKETING. 209 



disturbed for three or four days, the whole field of plants will 

 be devoured. 



KEMEDY FOR BUGS. 



The best remedy I have yet found for these pests, is a 

 sprinkling of liquid manure from my liquid manure cistern, 

 and while the leaves are yet wet with the liquid, to sprinkle 

 them over with land-plaster. If the weather is showery, the 

 application may have to be repeated, but as the application 

 itself is a good fertilizer, nothing is lost by its repetition. The 

 bugs being disposed of, nothing now remains between you and 

 good crops but thorough cultivation and frequent light showers, 

 not dashing showers, as these wash the pollen off the blossoms 

 and prevent fertilization. Thorough cultivation implies a com- 

 plete and repeated stirring of the ground between the rows 

 with plow and cultivator, and around the plant with the hoe 

 while the plants are young and newly transplanted. As the 

 roots spread rajiidly through the soil, care should be taken not 

 to cultivate too closely to the plant as this will retard the 

 ripening of the crop. 



MARKETING. 



Cucumbers, squash and tomatoes are ripe and fit for market 

 about the loth or 20th of July, but the melons are amonth later. 

 Tomatoes are packed in boxes five inches by eight inches and 

 twenty-two inches long, holding one-third of a bushel. The 

 size of this box is so suitable for early apples, tomatoes and 

 peaches, and has been in use for some fourteen years without 

 deviation in size, that its character and use is generally estab- 

 lished. 



Cucumbers, squash and melons are now packed in a very 

 suitable and convenient case, introduced by me in 1879, and 

 so generally approved by growers, commission men and deal- 

 ers, that its future use is conceded. It is made with two ends 

 (called heading), twelve by twelve inches, five-eighths thick, 

 of sound poplar, dressed on one side, and eight lath, two on 

 each side, cut one-quarter of an inch in thickness, five inches 

 broad and eighteen inches long; thus I have a case that holds 

 one dozen of first class white Japan nutmeg melons, that is 



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