JUNE 1, 1914 



439 



Rood, in selling his strawberries at the 

 groceries in Bradentown, has the same dif- 

 ficulty to meet. He takes pay out of the 

 store; but the grocer sells all kinds of pro- 

 duce such as meat, etc., and Mr. Rood keeps 

 quite a lot of men almost all the year round ; 

 and he also buys fertilizers by the ton. In 

 that way he does not have much difficulty in 

 trading out what is due him on the berries. 

 ()f eoui-se, the people who go there to the 

 berry-fields after fresh fruit pay cash, and 

 he gets quite a little in that way. 



While 1 think of it, our two sons visited 

 us last winter at different times, and they 

 thought there were no strawberries in all 

 the world better than the Florida product. 

 They just filled up on berries grown by Mr. 

 Rood, and " filled up " on cream also, fur- 

 nished by his Jersey cows. You see, Mi'. 

 Rood makes a specialty of " strawben-ies 

 and cream." Now, one reason why he keeps 

 so many Jersey cows is because of the 

 quantity of manure they furnish, which 

 down south is worth $3.00 a load. Now, 

 last but not least, I have got something else 

 that comes in right here most beautifully. 

 Some of you may come back at me and say, 

 " But, Mr. Root, you forget to mention that 

 you cannot grow those beautiful potatoes 

 sucli as you showed us in the picture with- 

 out buying a lot of expensive fertilizer at, 

 say, three or four dollars a bagful." 



Yes, I can. The hundred or more chick- 

 ens I usually keep furnish me all the fer- 

 tilizer needed to grow the produce; and the 

 finest sweet potatoes as well as Irish, that I 

 ever grew, are right on the ground where I 

 have had my poultry-yard, and they are 

 good big yards too, which T have had for 

 several years. 



Let us now wind up with a " summary " 

 of suggestions just as the experiment-sta- 

 tion bulletins give us. At the end of each 

 bulletin they say something like this : 



Potatoes can be planted all over Florida 

 from October to February; and if intelli- 

 gently grown and cared for they can be sold 

 for something like $2.00 a bushel ; and you 

 can, as a rule, swap a bushel of potatoes for 

 100 lbs. of corn or other grain. A good 

 jiart of the winter, eggs bring from 40 to 50 

 cents a dozen, and the poultry droppings 

 will furnish the very best fertilizer to help 

 supply the minerals that may be needed. 

 Now, this being true, how can anybody say 

 we cannot grow chickens in Florida because 

 the grain costs so much'? 



Let me add, in closing, that my colored 

 man, Wesley, has had charge of my chickens 

 since I left, May 1. He has work around in 

 the neighborhood, so it is not much of a 

 task for him to look after the chickens 



mornings and evenings, and he has just now 



sent in a report, for this present month of 

 May, of an average of over three dozen 

 eggs a day from about fifty laying hens. 

 He takes the eggs to market every night, 

 and swaps them for grain. Of course, eggs 

 now are only 20 cents a dozen ; but the 

 three dozen eggs pay for the feed of not 

 only the fifty laying hens, but as many more 

 pullets not yet quite old enough to lay, and 

 still leaves quite a fair margin every week 

 to pay him for his morning and night visits. 



HOW^ TO MAKE A HOT-BED ; ROOTED CUTTINGS, 

 POTTED PLANTS, ETC. 



When I reluctantly left my garden in 

 Florida, and came here where there is frost, 

 about May 1, for a few days I felt lost 

 because I could not see " things grow." One 

 of the first things I did was to order a big 

 wagonload of well-rotted stable manure. 

 Down in Florida it is $3.00 a load, and you 

 can not get old manure even then, or not 

 often ; but here in Ohio liverymen deliver it 

 for only $1.25 a load, and a big load at that. 

 Well, next day after he had pitched it on a 

 pile on the edge of the garden I noticed it 

 was smoking. This was specially noticeable 

 after a hard frost. (We had several hard 

 frosts the first week in May, and one light 

 frost on the 15th). Later, as I did not wish 

 my precious manure to " burn up " I took 

 a rake and spread it out, leveling it so as to 

 let it cool oft". In doing this I noticed it was 

 almost boiling hot, and it occurred to me 

 that, if I could throw some good soil on it, 

 it would be a nice place to start seeds. Then 

 my eye caught sight of an unused hot-bed 

 sash over in my son-in-law's garden. All 

 there was wanting, under the circumstances, 

 was a frame or wooden box, without top or 

 bottom, of the size of my sash, to be placed 

 over the hot manure. Now, I was in a 

 nuriy ; but I recalled that in the basement 

 there were some i^ieces of boards left by the 

 carpenter. There were none that were 6 

 feet long the size of my sash; but by taking 

 two short ones and lapping them together I 

 made two pieces for the sides of the sash, 

 exactly 6 feet long. In a similar way the 

 smaller bits made the end pieces, 3 feet long. 

 With hammer and nails (but without any 

 saw or other tools), I soon had a very ser- 

 viceable frame or box for my hot-bed with 

 sash on top of it. Now, down in Florida 

 May is the dry month. . My man Wesley 

 writes me to-day. May 18, that there has 

 been scarcely a drop of rain since I left ; 

 but here in Ohio — oh dear me ! every thing 

 has been swimming in water for the past 

 two weeks. I managed, however, to find 

 some of our clay soil that was dry enough 



