No. 4.] MARKET GARDENING. 95 



so that the water will not stand on it, and is practically level. 

 These are some of the most important points to consider in 

 this connection. 



All crops that are to be worked by hand shonld have the 

 rows run with the grade preferably north and south. Mine 

 we have to run east and west, and there is a considerable 

 tendency to grow to the south. 



If you have plenty of water at your disposal, a light, 

 loose soil will grow vegetables of most varieties to perfec- 

 tion ; and while the general belief is that such soils require 

 much more manure than those that are heavier, it is very 

 doubtful whether that is so in the average market garden, 

 where the land is kept constantly under cultivation. The 

 light soil is always in condition, mechanically, to grow a 

 crop ; all it needs is the fertilizing elements ; whereas the 

 heavy soil, in a few years of continual cropping, becomes so 

 fine that it will pack together so hard as to choke root growth, 

 and to obviate this the market gardener puts on very heavy 

 dressings of manure, — not that the crop uses up so much, 

 but on such ground the waste is so great. 



This loss is similar to that found by the Minnesota experi- 

 ment station, of which Voorhees says : — 



"By the system of continuous cropping which is univer- 

 sally observed in the great wheat fields in the north-west, 

 there were but 24.5 pounds of nitrogen removed in the crop 

 harvested, while the total loss per acre was 171 pounds, or 

 an excess of 146 pounds, a large part of which loss was cer- 

 tainly due to the rapid using up of the vegetable matter by 

 this improvident method of practice. Whereas, on the other 

 hand, when wheat was grown in a rotation with clover, the 

 gain in soil nitrogen far exceeded that lost or carried away 

 by the crop." 



In this connection I quote from a lecture by Peter Hender- 

 son before this Board in 1889 : — 



"Twenty-five years ago the market gardeners of New 

 Jersey, mainly located in Hudson County, grew better vege- 

 tables than the Long Island men ; but their limited area of 

 land, getting less and less annually, in consequence of the 

 inroads made by buildings, does not allow them to give their 

 lands the needed relief of laying a portion yearly down to 



