1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



479 



Trotman sows as much as a ton of spinach 

 seed every year. Spinach is a hig crop for 

 the city markets. 



Where we took dinner our host told us he 

 was offered *1.00 per cartload for all the stable 

 manure he had to spare. He said the man 

 who bought it carted it six miles at that. 



While some men amass great fortunes in 

 this sort of truck-gardening, there are others 

 who complain that "farming does not pay," 

 just as they do here at the North. It is "the 

 man who uses his brains, and profits each day 

 and each hour by past experience, who suc- 

 ceeds ; and after one has got the business so 

 under his thumb that he can manage to grow 

 the crops and sell them at a profit (that is, as 

 a rule), there seems to be no limit to what he 

 may accomphsh. He can keep adding farm 

 after farm — that is, so long as he can advise 

 and din ct the management. The secret of 

 having clean crops is by putting in practice 

 the very latest methods we have here at the 

 North. Their light and porous soil is, of 

 course, very much of an advantage to work. 

 The potatoes are planted and covered very 

 much as we do it — that is, the pieces are drop- 

 ped at the proper distances apart in a furrow, 

 and then the ground is thrown over them so 

 as to leave somewhat of a ridge. Just before 

 the weeds get to be visible this ridge is worked 

 down a little with horses and proper tools. 

 After a few days, or when the rain has made 

 a good crust on the soil, this crust is broken, 

 and the ground worked down a little more. 

 This is continued till after the potatoes are 

 up, breaking the crust and stirring the soil 

 right in under the plants ; and no field is ever 

 neglected so as to let the weeds get the start. 

 It does not pay ; neither are bugs allowed to 

 get in their depredations. Some of the truck- 

 ers sprinkle on Paris green and plaster. Some 

 use a barrel on wheels (with Paris green and 

 water) that sprays four rows at a time. 



Now, these truckers have a sort of rotation 

 in garden stuff. For instance, potatoes are 

 grown mostly between strawberries, or, rather, 

 strawberries are grown mostly between pota- 

 toes. The rows of potatoes are five feet apart 

 in this case, and a row of sirawberries is put 

 between every two rows of potatoes ; and, 

 judging from appearance, they are set in 

 about as soon as the potatoes come up. The 

 small-footed mules pull their light cultivators 

 between the rows, only 30 inches apart, with- 

 out any trouble. I believe they are rather 

 better than horses, because they rarely or 

 never step on the plants. After the potatoes 

 are marketed, then the strawberries have the 

 whole of the ground. To give you some idea 

 of the strawberry business at Norfolk, I make 

 the following extract from a letter from friend 

 Stebbins : 



Saturday afternoon, at the back of one of our steam- 

 boat what ves I counted 17 sail-l o:>ts unloading straw- 

 berries at once, while others were in sight coming in 

 to unload, and still others going out unloaded. At the 

 front was a string of teams a quarter of a mile long, 

 waiting their turn to unload. Three teams could un- 

 load at once, and T don't think it took more than five 

 or six minutes to the three teams. In going a mile I 

 counted 15 more teams coming in, all loaded with ber- 

 ries; that was at half past three, and that soit of thing 

 would keep up until six or half past. Now. that is 

 only one of half a dozen lines in town at the same 



business. You could smell strawberries for half a 

 mile. John W. Stebbins. 



Broad Creek, Va., May 15. 



At the time I arrived, the strawberry-gath- 

 ering had come to a sudden stop, not because 

 the berries were gone, mind you, but because 

 the price had dropped to a point where it did 

 not pay to pick them. In Norfolk they pay 

 two cents a quart to the pickers. Then they 

 have to furnish crates and boxes ; and at the 

 price offered, only three cents, it did not pay 

 for harvesting. So the owners of the fields, 

 even while the rows were red with berries, 

 gave out to the country all around that who- 

 ever chore, colored or white, could come and 

 pick, without money and without price, all 

 they wished. We found colored people scat- 

 tered all over the fields, picking ; others walk- 

 ing into town with cia.es of berries on their 

 heads. They went through the town offering 

 them at the houses for only three cents a 

 quart. As the berries cost them nothing, they 

 did perhaps very well at the work ; but it 

 seemed to me to be rather discouraging busi- 

 ness for the grower. 



In some places we found the pickers scram- 

 bling out of the way of the horses and plows. 

 They were turning the berries under in order 

 to get in another crop without letting the 

 expensive land lie idle. Friend Stebbins says 

 he has seen berries turned under when there 

 were enough to make the red juice follow the 

 plow as it crushed them in the furrow. Three 

 of his family went out the evening before, and 

 in three hours the}' gathered 70 quarts in one 

 of these deserted fields. 



One gardener whom we called on (Mr. 

 Henry Norfleet) had about half an acre of 

 Lady Thompsons. There had been scarcely 

 any berries picked from the field when the 

 price went down. I do not know that I ever 

 saw more ripe berries on a given area at one 

 time. Some of them were really overripe — 

 large and luscious. Nobody wanted them as 

 a. free gift. We had been eating berries all 

 day — at least I had — but we felt so sorry to 

 see these wasting that we ate a good many 

 more. The Lady Thompson is certainly a 

 very fine berry in the South. It is hard for 

 the growers, it is true ; but yet it certainly is 

 a great blessing to a community to have ber- 

 ries so cheap that all can have all they want, 

 morning, noon, and night. I asked some of 

 the growers if they proposed to keep right on 

 raising strawberries. They said there was 

 no other way to do, and that they frequently 

 had to make the best of a glut in the market 

 in almost all kinds of produce ; but the man 

 who keeps right on growing good crops is 

 pretty sure, sooner or later, to have some- 

 thing to sell when the price is good and every- 

 body wants it. Just one illustration : 



We saw one large field of peas that were 

 entirely ruined by a little aphis that covered 

 the vines. This had appeared this year for 

 the first time in a good many places, and had 

 entirely ruined the crop. Now, the one who 

 is lucky enough to have plenty of peas to sell 

 will get a high price for them. 



My attention was called to the fact (and I 

 was very soon satisfied of the truth of it) that 



