No. 4.] MARKET GARDENING. 33 



saw. Do it thoroughly, and for the time being all the dis- 

 eases and all the insects, all the weeds, will be vanquished. 



The cost of crops is something that is very difficult to as- 

 certain in market gardening; but, if you will keep account 

 year after year of the different crops and the different prices 

 they bring, you will find out in time that some crops are 

 bringing enough to pay the cost of growing, while other 

 crops are not ; and to your surprise sometimes you will find 

 that the crop that you thought was paying you best is one of 

 the poorest-paying crops. I have gone at it this way, — 

 when a crop didn't pay for three years, I got somebody 

 else to grow that crop. 



The question of seeds is a very important one to the 

 market gardener. The price that he pays for seeds is noth- 

 ing compared to the value of the work they are doing; 

 that is, it is a very small amount of the expense of the 

 crop, and for that reason a man who pays the biggest price 

 for seeds is sure to get the best. A great many of the seeds 

 sold to the market gardeners you don't find in the cata- 

 logue, neither the price nor the seeds, but the dealer has 

 them for those customers of his who he knows want the 

 best. And why does he keep them ? Because he knows 

 they will pay for them. 



Thorough cultivation is one of the principal things in 

 market gardening; once plowing and harrowing is very 

 well, twice plowing and harrowing is a good deal better, 

 and a third cultivation with fifty or sixty cords of manure 

 to the acre is best of all. It is well to sell your goods in 

 the market in large quantities, raising enough so you can 

 be in the market every day, that they may know you are 

 coining and know what you have; and also to put up your 

 goods so they won't have to look at the bottom of the box 

 to see what is in it, and to put them up so they can put a 

 cover on them and send them anywhere and never have 

 them come back. 



Mr. Augustus Pratt (of North Middleborough). Many 

 of the farmers in my section are obliged to use commercial 

 fertilizers to a great extent, because we are located so far 



