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to grow. Many of his early vegetables are forwarded in hot 

 beds under glass. On most of the ground which he cultivates, 

 he gets from two to four crops. A crop of radishes, lettuce, 

 beans, and cucumbers may be had on the same ground the same 

 season ; and to these a fifth crop, fall spinach, is sometimes 

 added. In the past season he says he has had crops, which, by 

 the old modes of husbandry, would have occupied ten acres, 

 growing upon four acres. 



His practice is for the first crop to give such a dressing of 

 manure as will carry that and the succeeding crops well through 

 without renewal. He never manures sparingly. 



His onions are sowed in July or the first of August. They 

 / are lightly covered with litter in the fall, and early in the spring 

 are uncovered and become soon fit for the market ; and the crop 

 is off the ground in season for its successor. 



Mr. Pierce values very highly stable manure, and wishes to 

 apply it 10 his crops in its hottest state. It then forces vegeta- 

 tion most rapidly and powerfully. He has seen the powerful 

 effects of night-soil more than five years after its application ; 

 but it was in this case applied liberally ; and it must never be 

 used without composting. For ashes he has a high estimation, 

 and when the soap-boiler calls to buy his ashes for the custom- 

 ary price of ten cents a bushel, he replies by offering the soap- 

 boiler twenty cents a bushel for all he has, and buys them, if 

 he can. I give his opinions as those of a strictly practical man, 

 of much experience and perhaps inferior to none in the admira- 

 ble skill and success of his cultivation. It is pretty evident 

 that he does not wait in the morning for the sun to call him. 



In referring to these extraordinary results it would be idle to 

 think that they are reached without skill, judgment, energy, 

 perseverance and toil. But it is a skill which sharpens the 

 wits; and a toil, if not excessive, which quickens the appetite, 

 and strengthens the muscles, and keeps off idle dreams. The 

 earth is a good paymaster; but it does not acknowledge any 

 obligations to those to whom it owes nothing. 



5. The farm of Caleb Wetherbee, in Marlborough, consists 



