GARDENING UNDER GLASS 339 



small- fruit growers, and to get a reputation for the extent of their operations 

 rather than the perfection of their product. With the inception of winter 

 gardening, even with the crude aid of plant-cloth, there is already a disposi- 

 tion to concentrate capital and labor on smaller areas, as it becomes evident 

 that the man who pays more attention to quality than quantity will win in the 

 competition with his neighbors. The effort that the Northern growers have 

 made by the erection of expensive greenhouse plants, to compete with this in 

 more favored climates, is leading to the same effort on the part of the growers 

 in the upper South, who are beginning to realize the advantage their rapid 

 transportation facilities give them in sending products of a very perishable 

 nature, which those still further South cannot handle on equal terms. 



But it is not merely of the Southern development we would treat in this 

 book, but of winter culture under glass generally, and the part that commer- 

 cial fertilizers are everywhere taking in this culture. The older winter forc- 

 ers in' the immediate vicinity of the Northern cities, like the market gardeners 

 there in the open ground, have long enjoyed the advantage which comes to the 

 gardener from the ability to command large supplies of stable manure, but 

 the progress of market gardening southward has been made possible solely, 

 through the agency of commercial fertilizers and railroads. Even in those 

 parts of the country where there was the ability to command supplies of stable 

 manure, the growers under glass and in the open ground have long since 

 found out the great advantage of having manures which are more completely 

 adapted to the making of a balanced ration for their plants than was possible 

 where stable manure alone was used. Hence there are no men who are study- 

 ing the use of commercial fertilizers more closely than the gardeners under 

 glass, whether florists or vegetable forcers, and it is in the interest of this 

 class that we have determined to prepare this part of our book. We propose 

 to treat the subject from the simple frame and its use North and South to the 

 more elaborate forcing house in use in the North and gradually coming south- 

 ward; hence we will begin with the crops that have attained the greatest 

 commercial importance. 



WINTER LETTUCE. 



Few of our friends on the farm who have never had an opportunity to 

 observe the culture, have any notion of the great extent to which the growing 

 of so simple a crop as lettuce has developed. The consumption of lettuce in 

 all of our larger cities and towns has wonderfully increased of late years. 

 Thirty years ago, when the writer began to cultivate frame lettuce in Mary- 

 land, the demand was limited to the wealthy and better hotels and restaurants, 

 and few people of moderate means ever saw a head of lettuce in winter. 



