GARDENING AND TRUCK FARMING. 293 



around to their houses regularly every day or every other day. 

 Take orders at each trip for the next. Always give good meas- 

 ure, and do not top out, so that they will think they are getting 

 nicer vegetables than they are. Have every thing you sell in as 

 attractive a form as possible. Be obliging, and carry the vege- 

 tables into the cellar or back shed if they wish you to, and try 

 to establish a reputation for fair dealing. If you will do this, 

 you can retain your customers as long as you wish. 



Those living near a city can often grow tomatoes, melons, 

 sweet corn, and other truck, and sell it at wholesale better than 

 to try to market it themselves, and it will often pay to keep the 

 larger part of the farm in grass, and buy grain and feed as much 

 stock as possible in winter to furnish manure for the truck patch. 

 To those who have a taste for gardening and are so situated as 

 to have a good market, and who can command the help and 

 manure needed, there is no way in which so large an income 

 can be realized from a few acres of land. There is this advan- 

 tage, also, that there is a regular cash income during the larger 

 part of the year. If one engages in regular market gardening 

 and grows early vegetables, such as radishes and lettuce, under 

 glass, he should have no other business. But truck farming 

 can be profitably combined on many farms with dairying, and 

 where the farmer can establish a milk route and sell the milk 

 from a half dozen or more of cows, he will find a largely in- 

 creased profit from combining the two. 



This system of truck farming will become more and more 

 profitable as our population increases, and its adoption will 

 enable many young men to remain on the farm who would 

 gladly do so, but are led to go to the cities because they think 

 it takes one hundred acres of land to furnish support for a 

 family. In the following pages will be found directions for the 

 cultivation of vegetables and descriptions of varieties. 



DESCRIPTION OF VEGETABLES, 



AND DIRECTIONS FOR PLANTING AND CULTIVATING. 



Asparagus. It is a matter of surprise that asparagus is so 

 seldom found in the farmer's garden, for there is no vegetable 



