CHAPTER XIII 



EXPERIMENTAL GARDENING 



Novel features were encouraged by quite a large 

 percentage of the contestants. In some cases the new 

 departure hightened the value of the account, while in 

 other cases the un familiarity of the gardener with new 

 circumstances greatly hampered his efforts. Some 

 tried new crops or new varieties, others chose unusual 

 locations, while still others tested untried methods and 

 conditions. Many of these are necessarily included in 

 other chapters. 



Reclaiiuuig a Waste. — The solid satisfaction of 

 changing a half barren, stony, untilled tract of one- 

 fourth acre into a good garden and incidentally win- 

 ning the third Rawson special prize, belongs to C. P. 

 Byington, Cairo, New York, whose little farm is 

 located at the base of the Catskills, ten miles from the 

 Hudson river. The description is from Mr. Bying- 

 ton's account : 



Operations in the garden began when the owner 

 moved on the place in the spring of 1897, and con- 

 sisted mainly in the removal of dead cherry trees, 

 currant bushes and stones ; and incidentally, the re- 

 moval of stones has formed the bulk of my operations 

 ever since. As an evidence of what has been accom- 

 plished along this line, there is a solid roadbed for a 

 distance of three hundred feet in the highway fronting 

 the property, composed wholly of the stones removed 

 from the garden; these stones, covered with coarse 

 gravel, forming one of the best bits of road in the 

 town. During the two years since April, 1897, the 



