112 PRIZE GARDENING 



saved for use in hills and second crop, but it was soon 

 found the soil had quite as much fertilizer as the seed 

 and plants would bear, so Mr. Abrams used the balance 

 largely between the rows. 



Labor was charged at twelve cents per hour by 

 hand and thirty cents by horse. Fertilizer cost four- 

 teen dollars and thirty-five cents and seeds three dol- 

 lars and three cents. Among the crops were lettuce, 

 radish, peas, tomatoes, cabbage, celery, cucumbers, 

 beets, beans, turnips, corn. The location proved excel- 

 lent for celery, yielding one thousand one hundred and 

 twenty plants, worth sixteen dollars and eighty cents. 

 Total receipts w^ere seventy-four dollars and forty 

 cents ; cost, forty dollars and seventy-nine cents ; profit, 

 thirty-three dollars and sixty-one cents. 



Feeding the Soil. — By using fertilizer at the rate 

 of two tons to the acre, R. E. Bartlett, New Hamp- 

 shire (Bowker five-dollar prize), managed to make 

 a tolerably good garden from a plot which had been 

 used as a yard for colts and in cleaning which all the 

 surface soil had been removed. The owner says : " The 

 land seemed dead and did not do so well as much other 

 land that I tilled.'' The fertilizer was mostly sowed 

 and then raked in. The plot contained only one thou- 

 sand three hundred square feet, valued at two dol- 

 lars. It produced a great variety of vegetables for 

 home use, worth ten dollars and fifty-seven cents, at 

 a cost of six dollars and twenty-nine cents. Profit, 

 four dollars and twenty-eight cents. Much of the fer- 

 tilizer would remain for the following year unless the 

 texture of the denuded soil being little better than sand 

 should allow leaching. A cover crop of rye plowed 

 under in the spring would help save the fertility and 

 tend to restore the soil. 



A Fine Profit from one thousand square feet is 

 shown by S. L. Parker, Massachusetts. He cleared 



