190 



QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 



Vegetable 



Forcing 



Houses. 



Potato. 



Depression 

 in 



Market 

 Gardening. 



1028. Q. What are the general dimensions of the vegetable forcing 

 houses operated by market gardeners growing truck for Winter sales? 



A. The writer knows of houses 240 x 30 feet ; 250 x 40 feet ; 400 x 40 

 feet ; 1600 x 20 feet. And possibly there are yet more extended areas of 

 glass entirely devoted to growing vegetables for Winter sale, as lettuce, 

 radish, cucumber, tomato, watercress. 



1029. Q. Is not the potato one of the most healthful foods ? 



A. No ; it might more properly be classed, as ordinarily served on 

 the table, as an unhealthful food. The reason is that the potato is com- 

 posed to a large extent of starch, which to become nutritious has to 

 undergo a sugary change by the action of the stomach juices, and this 

 change is particularly slow in the case of the potato, as it is a dense food 

 slowly acted upon by the digestive fluids, and consequently it remains for 

 a longer period in the stomach than rice or any other starchy food. This 

 retention in the stomach results in the partial decomposition of the starch, 

 the evolving of gases and formation of combinations which distend 

 and irritate the stomach and intestines, producing in some persons 

 dyspepsia and diarrhoea. Strong constitutions apparently resist the 

 slightest injurious influences from this cause, but nevertheless their diges- 

 tive organs are at the same time taxed to a greater extent than if the food 

 was rice, which, by the way, is not a quickly digested food. Potatoes as a 

 food are most objectionable when fried, most wholesome when baked. 



1030. Q. What is the cause of the depression in market gardening? 



A. Overproduction, and consequently overcompetition and lowering 

 of profits, the same cause as produces agricultural depression. Any 

 thoughtful market gardener clearly realizes the cause to be the opening of 

 the many and new truck-groioing sections, almost limitless, in the South 

 Atlantic and Gulf States, in the Middle Cotton States, and throughout the 

 entire Mississippi valley, all these throwing at all seasons into all the 

 markets of the country, especially the Northern cities, such an avalanche 

 of fruit and vegetables as to have almost completely obliterated the 

 profits of the Northern market gardener, and as well most seriously cut 

 down the receipts of the Southern truck farmer, the prevailing agricultural 

 depression having turned to market gardening tens of thousands of regular 

 farmers. 



It might in this connection be asked. What has caused the agricultural 

 depression? and the reply is. The same overproduction; the result of 

 several causes. One, the opening up in our far-Western country of millions 

 of acres of new lands to foreigners to grow competing crops of wheat, 

 corn and potatoes, which they do at comparatively little expense. 

 Another cause, the development of field machinery, by which ten men do 

 the work of one hundred in the past, consequently every proprietor is 

 able to seed and harvest ten times the number of acres. Another, the 

 development of railroad transportation, by which the product of most dis- 

 tant parts is brought to the seaboard to compete with that grown upon 



