Truck Gardening Success Around Mobile 



Climate and Soil Favor the Industry 



ACCORDING to the calendar it was November, late in Novem- 

 ber, the day before Thanksgiving. 



A skirt of woods back from the bay and in the distance, all 

 bedecked with bufif, red and yellow glory confirmed the cal- 

 endar. 



The word of the calendar needed confirmation along the old 

 Shell Road. It might have been April, May or August but 

 not November. The sunlight danced upon countless waves, 

 the smell of the salt sea was in the balmy breeze that blew up 

 from the Gulf, the road was lined with myrtles, magnolias and 

 evergreens. It was spring along the Bay Shore road, spring 

 with gentle breezes and soft luxuriant sunshine. 



Over in his field a few feet from the road, a gardener in his 

 shirt sleeves was industriously digging his Irish potatoes. He 

 was turning the rounded potatoes, with projecting eyes, from 

 the ground in great batches with a hoe. An assistant in a bat- 

 tered derby hat and smoking a short stemmed pipe was run- 

 ning a wheel barrow up and down in the rows, now filled with 

 potatoes and now empty. 



And this in the latter part of November. 1 was told that it 

 was his second crop the man was gathering, a former crop 

 having been made and gathered on this same piece of land 

 earlier in the year. 



As we drove out of the city I recalled that we had passed 

 three car loads of cabbages, green and succulent. The cab- 

 bage had been piled in immense crated cars through which their 

 verdant and inviting beauty could be seen. They were for the 

 Northern markets for the Christmas season. I was told too, 

 that it was the second crop of cabbage for Mobile for the year. 

 The first crop had been gathered in the late spring and early 

 summer. 



