MarKet Gardening on Up-to-date Principles 



FEW classes of people work as long 

 hours and as hard as market 

 gardeners. Many gardeners work 

 harder than is necessary. They have 

 got into ruts. Because they have been 

 brought up to grow their crops in a 

 certain manner and trained to per- 

 form most, if not all, of the work 

 themselves, they have come to be- 

 lieve that it is the only thing for them 

 to do. Were they to use a little more 

 judgment, were they to devise meth- 

 ods of economizing labor and saving 

 time, their work would contain more of 

 pleasure and less of drudgery. 



Few market gardeners have as up- 

 to-date methods or better establish- 

 ments than Mr. Frank Wilhams, of 

 Ottawa South, a 

 former president of 

 the Ottawa branch 

 of the Ontario Vege- 

 table Growers' Asso- 

 ciation. A represen- 

 tative of The 

 Canadian Horticul- 

 turist, who spent a 

 morning with Mr. 

 Williams, was much 

 impressed by what 

 he saw and heard. 

 Mr. Williams is a 

 thinker. He has in- 

 troduced many new 

 ideas into the man- 

 age ment of his 

 market garden. The 

 unusually fine estab- 

 lishment he has, 

 bears evidence that 

 his ideas have been 

 both practical and a 

 success. 



In the first place, 

 Mr. Williams has a 

 nice house with pleas- 

 ing surroundings. 

 Flowers and a neatly kept lawn add 

 to the attractiveness of the home. In 

 the second place, Mr. Williams beHeves 

 in marketing his goods in respectable 

 and .__ up-to-date express wagons and 

 with good horses, and above every- 

 thing else, a clean, neatly dressed, 

 obliging driver. "There is no sense 

 in going around in dirty old clothes 

 and with ramshackle wagons," said 

 Mr. Williams. "The public will value 

 us just as we value ourselves. Unless 

 we show the public that we respect 

 ourselves and our business, you can 

 depend upon it that they will not re- 

 spect us. There is no reason why the 

 average vegetable grower should not 

 be able to go into a bank or business 

 office and make as favorable an im- 

 pression as any business man." 



A LARGE ESTABLISHMENT 



Mr. Williams' establishment com- 



prises thirty acres of vegetables. During 

 the busy season he employs ten to 

 fifteen men, and in winter five and 

 six. While Mr. Williams is able to 

 use a hoe as well as any of his men, he 

 does not consider it advisable to do 

 so any more than he can help. He 

 believes that his time can be spent to 

 better advantage in directing the work 

 of his men. His father was the first 

 market gardener in the vicinity of the 

 city of Ottawa. . "I can remember," 

 said Mr. Williams, "when there were 

 log fences on Maria St." Maria Street, 

 it might be explained, is now one of 

 the most central streets in the city of 

 Ottawa. Its name h^s been changed 

 recently to Laurier Avenue. 



Boiler House and Greenhouses on Mr. Williams' Establishment 



The most striking feature of Mr. 

 Williams' establishment is his new 

 boiler house and greenhouses. These 

 are the finest owned by a vegetable 

 grower that our representative had 

 ever seen. One of the houses is 30 

 X 176 feet, and runs east and west. A 

 second house that has been up three 

 years, is 40 x 165 feet. 



The new boiler house is at the end 

 of the greenhouses and is situated 

 on the side of a hill. It is twenty-six 

 feet by sixty feet and two stories high. 

 The walls in the foundation are one 

 foot thick and twelve feet high and 

 are made of concrete. It is possible 

 to drive into the basement, where 

 there are two boilers that are used to 

 heat the greenhouses. This enables 

 Mr. Williams to handle the coal and 

 ashes and perform other work inci- 

 dental to the management of boilers, 



275 



to the best possible advantage. In 

 winter, a market wagon is driven 

 into the basement and loaded with 

 vegetables in a warm room without 

 danger of the vegetables being injured 

 by frost. 



One of the boilers in the boiler house 

 is forty horse power and the other 

 eighty horse power. "Many growers," 

 said Mr. Williams, "make a mistake 

 by putting in small boilers. A few 

 years later, their business has grown 

 and they are forced to tear them out 

 and replace them with larger ones. 

 Our boilers are so arranged that we 

 can add more easily and without much 

 expense." 



' A REPUTATION FOR QUALITY 



Owing to an effort 

 having been made at 

 one time to force Mr. 

 Williams out of busi- 

 ness because he would 

 not agree to have his 

 vegetables sold by a 

 company, he was 

 forced to adopt new 

 methods of disposing 

 of his crops. He de- 

 cided to establish a 

 reputation for qual- 

 ity. With that object 

 he made it a practice 

 to grade his vege- 

 tables and fruit. The 

 poorer grades were 

 sold across the river 

 in Hull among fac- 

 tory employees and 

 mill hands. The 

 better grades had a 

 card attached to 

 them, bearing the 

 words, "Frank Wil- 

 liams, Rideau Gard- 

 ens, Ottawa South," 

 and were sold in 

 Ottawa. It was not long before there 

 was such a demand for his produce he 

 had little difficulty in disposing of all he 

 could raise, and at high prices. Mr. 

 Williams makes a specialty of melons. 

 He sells melons in Toronto to a fancy 

 trade at higher prices than the To- 

 ronto market gardeners receive. 



"There is no use," said Mr. Wil- 

 liams, "in a man trying to grow all 

 kinds of vegetables, because no man 

 can do it successfully. He should pick 

 out a few of the crops which are the 

 most profitable, and for which his 

 land is best suited, and specialize on 

 them. In all other lines of business, 

 men are speciaUzing more and more. 

 It is time that the vegetable growers 

 did the same." 



In setting out his lettuce, Mr. Wil- 

 liams sets the plants six inches apart. 

 His lettuce weighs from one pound up 



