28 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



After harrowing in well, the ground was thrown up into 

 3-foot ridges, and in August the four acres were set with cab- 

 bage and cauliflower, at the rate of 7,000 to the acre, giving 

 a total of 28,000 plants. The growth was extraordinary, and 

 not a spotted leaf or diseased plant in the whole lot, from 

 first to last. I never before or since saw such heads, and 

 many of the older members of the Cotton Exchange will 

 remember, that when they occupied the old building on 

 Strand, near Twenty-first, I exhibited on their floors, for sev- 

 eral weeks, in half-barrels, three giant cauliflowers and three 

 cabbages, taken up with balls of earth, the smallest head of 

 which, when stripped of the outer leaves, weighed 17 pounds, 

 and several, both of the cauliflower and cabbage, weighed 20 

 pounds, and were as large as a half-bushel measure. 



The winter was very mild, and the whole crop was sold on 

 the grounds, netting considerably over $6,000, after which 

 the four acres were planted to melons, and the crop was equally 

 fine, and not a sick plant, where the eel worm and "die back" 

 were plentiful before. 



Here, then, was the secret of "played out" and diseased 

 soil. Simply a want of that great tonic of the vegetable sys- 

 tem, potash. 



I had for years been applying heavy doses of ammonia 

 and phosphoric acid, while the sandy soil had been drained 

 of its potash, resulting in diminished and diseased crops. 

 From then until 1883, when I left the island, I invariably 

 applied the muriate of potash at first, and after the oil mill 

 was established, cotton-seed hull ashes, which I got then, 

 load for load of sand, and though cabbage was planted regu- 

 larly every year, and twice a spring and fall crop were grown 

 on the same ground, I was never troubled with diseased cab- 

 bage or melons again. 



Just how potash works I cannot say. Whether it actually 

 destroys the bacteria of fungous diseases, and such minute 

 pests as the eel worm, which is exceeding small, or whether 

 it simply gives health and vigor to the plants themselves, 

 strengthening and hardening the tissues of both leaves and 

 roots, and thus enabling them to resist attack, I leave for 



