3438 VEGETABLE-GARDENING 



VEGETABLE-GARDENING 



ing returns from improvements which are far more 

 costly than in other lines of agriculture. 



The past ten years has seen the beginning of organi- 

 zation among vegetable producers. Cooperative selling 

 is becoming a larger factor in the selling of produce on 

 distant markets, and garden districts not yet ready for 

 cooperative selling are finding material advantage in 

 unified action in matters of the gathering of informa- 

 tion as to their methods, in the purchase of supplies, 

 the standardization of packages, the improvement of 

 local market conditions, and of transportation facili- 

 ties, in overseeing legislation and securing assistance 

 through investigational agencies in the solution of local 

 problems. The Vegetable Growers' Association of 

 America was organized in 1908 and has brought into 

 contact with one another a large group of men from all 

 sections of the country. The New York State Vegetable 

 Growers' Association, formed in 1911, has been the 

 pioneer in state organization. All of these societies, 

 national, state, and local, are finding new fields of use- 

 fulness and are each year serving directly an increased 

 proportion of the men in the business, while all find 

 advantage through their promotion of the general 

 welfare. 



Education; literature. 



For many years a course in vegetable-gardening has 

 been included in the curricula of most of the agricultural 

 colleges of the United States and Canada, and more or 

 less attention has been given to research in vegetable- 

 gardening problems on the part of agricultural experi- 

 ment stations. However, until within the last few years, 

 both the teaching and research in reference to this sub- 

 ject were in most institutions conducted as incidental 

 matters by some member of the staff whose principal 

 energies were demanded by other horticultural inter- 

 ests. At the present tune much more attention than 

 formerly is being given the subject of vegetable-garden- 

 ing hi educational institutions, and many of the agri- 

 cultural colleges and stations now have one or more 

 men devoting then- entire time to vegetable interests. 

 In some of the institutions several courses are offered in 

 vegetable work, including an introductory course, an 

 advanced course in market-gardening, and courses in 

 vegetable-forcing, systematic vegetable crops, and 

 undergraduate research. Provision is also made for 

 graduate work in problems bearing on vegetable- 

 gardening. 



Vegetable-gardening is also found to be especially 

 adapted for use as a basis for giving instruction in the 

 fundamental principles of crop production in schools, 

 especially in those having only a limited area of land 

 available for "laboratory" purposes. The simple equip- 

 ment involved, the possibility of using odd bits of 

 ground, the relatively short time in which results can 

 be expected, and the high value of the product to be 

 derived from a small area, together with its easy adap- 

 tation to educational purposes, all render this phase of 

 agriculture especially serviceable in such activities. 

 The work is conducted on special plots laid out for 

 that purpose, and on the home farms and back yards. 



There is a large literature devoted to vegetable-gar- 

 dening, although much of it applies chiefly to amateur 

 or home growing. Leading current books on the general 

 subject of vegetable-gardening are those by Greiner, 

 Green, Henderson, Rawson, Landreth, Bailey, Watts, 

 Lloyd, and Corbett. For California one should consult 

 Wickson's "California Vegetables in Garden and Field," 

 and for the Atlantic South, Rolfs' "Vegetable-Growing 

 in the South for Northern Markets," Oemler's "Truck- 

 Farming at the South," and Rolfs' "Subtropical 

 Vegetable-Gardening." There are many books devoted 

 to special topics, and there are many others which in 

 their time were of great practical value, but which are 

 now chiefly known as recording the history of the 

 epoch in which they were written. Only one American 



work has been devoted to descriptions of varieties of 

 vegetables, as the works of Downing, Thomas, and 

 others have to varieties of fruits. This work is Fearing 

 Burr's "Field and Garden Vegetables of America," 

 Boston, 1863, and the abridgment of it in 1866, called 

 "Garden Vegetables and How to Cultivate Them." 

 A list of the American vegetable-gardening literature 

 to that date may be found in Bailey 's "Principles of 

 Vegetable-Gardening" (1901). See also Horticulture, 

 Literature of, Vol. III. Persons who desire a cyclopedic 

 account of vegetables should consult Vilmorin's "Les 

 Plantes Potageres," an English translation of the first 

 edition of which is published in London as "The Vege- 

 table Garden." Odd and little-known vegetables are 

 treated in Paillieux & Bois, "Le Potager d'un Curieux ," 

 Paris, 3d ed. 1899. L. H. B. 



JOHN W. LLOYD. 



PAUL WORK. 



Vegetable-growing hi California. 



It is an interesting fact that although California's 

 horticultural prominence now rests on fruit 'products, 

 the first attraction to the new state, after the gold 

 discovery, was the wonderful growth of garden vege- 

 tables. The reports of immense size, of acreage product 

 and of prices secured, were almost incredible because so 

 much in advance of ordinary standards, but the state- 

 ments were so fully authenticated that many were drawn 

 to California by them. These horticultural pioneers, 

 however, soon found that immigrants from Asia and 

 the Mediterranean region, by their cheap living and 

 by doing their own work, could cut under American 

 growers who had to employ high-priced labor, and so the 

 latter retired from the field, leaving the opportunity to 

 the frugal and thrifty foreigner. Thus vegetable-grow- 

 ing, from an American point of view, came into disrepute 

 and largely retains such disadvantage at present. The 

 result is that the American largely avoids market- 

 gardening, while Asiatics and South Europeans are 

 thriving on it. There has been a reflection of the same 

 disfavor in the farm growing of vegetables for home use, 

 and our farming population, including the fruit-growers 

 who should know and do better, is largely dependent 

 on alien vegetable peddlers or products of canneries 

 instead of fresh home-grown esculents, which would be 

 cheaper and inexpressibly better than canned or trans- 

 ported supplies. 



Fortunately there arose about twenty-five years ago 

 a large industry in growing vegetables for overland ship- 

 ment and for canning which clothed the plant-cultures 

 involved in this trade with a new dignity and impor- 

 tance attractive to American growers. Cabbage, cauli- 

 flower, and celery for eastern shipment, asparagus for 

 canning and for shipment, tomatoes for canning, and 

 the like, have all become large special crops, while 

 some other plants, like lima beans, which are chiefly 

 grown in gardens elsewhere, have become field crops in 

 California covering very large acreage. Such enter- 

 prises have enlisted American citizens and changed 

 the popular conception of the dignity and opportunity 

 of vegetable-growing. A measure of this influence, as 

 well as of the extent of the product, may be had in the 

 average annual shipments of green vegetables beyond 

 state lines for several years ending with 1914: 



Vegetables Carloads 



Artichokes (Globe) 150 



Asparagus 350 



Celery 2,500 



Cauliflower 1,000 



Cabbage 1,000 



Potatoes 10,000 



Lettuce 300 



Tomatoes 2,000 



Mixed vegetables 1 ,000 



The canned-vegetable output of 1914 was 2,373,182 

 cases (each containing twenty-four 2j^-pound tins) 



