1889. 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



133 



business pays if well understood and managed, 

 and some of our expenses are growing less; 

 manure is cheaper. An investment of ten thous- 

 and dollars will give a yearly return of 

 four thousand profit. 



Mr. Varnum Frost said market gardening was 

 a hard life and that the business had not im- 

 proved of late yeai-s; better crops of Lettuce, 

 Radishes, Celery and Potjitoes were grown thirty 

 years ago than now, and that the opportunities 

 for making money tlien were better than now; 

 it needs more energy and more capital now to 

 raise them, but all business is done on a smaller 

 margin of profit than formerly. 



Mr. John Crosby asked how the business of 

 market gardening compared with other busi- 

 ness; does it attract young men today? He 

 thought that the market gardenei-s worked 

 longer hours than any other class, and that very 

 few men who had followed it for twenty years 

 had a sound constitution. 



Mr. Wellington said he had spent eight years, 

 as a young man, at mercantile life in the West, 

 and then came back to the farm wheie the 

 investment of one hundred dollai'S seemed to be 

 the surest means of returning a profit and has 

 never regretted the investment. He found the 

 first one thousand dollars the hardest to make: 

 after that it was plain sailing. He believed that 

 a gardener who was devoted to his business had 

 abetter chance than in any mercantile pursuit 

 he knew of. Of several men for whom he had 

 worked in other business, only one was now 

 successful. 



Mr. Pierce Cutter, of Arlington, produced his 

 account book of 30 years ago, to show that prices 

 were 33 per cent higher then than now. 



Mr. Henry Allen did not want young men to be 

 discouraged, the present being as auspicious as 

 any past time for a young man to engage in the 

 business and would advise hira to go into gar- 

 dening business rather than go to college, for we 

 are overrun with professional men. If a young 

 man puts into a farm the money and time that 

 he puts in college he will be better otf. Ninety- 

 five per cent of the merchants fail. A young 

 man in mercantile or professional life cannot 

 expect to earn more than a living for the first 

 ten years. Ninety-nine farmers in every 100 pay 

 their bills, and some of them get to be well off, 

 the cash system being the great blessing 

 of the business. 



Mr. E. P. Kirby said he had once been employed 

 in mercantile lite and took to the farm on ac- 

 count of health, on advice of a physician. He 

 liked the business and meant to follow it. He 

 considered that success in market gardening will 

 in the near future be drawn along the lines of a 

 knowledge of nature's advanced laws. Capital 

 will be found to be a great factor of success in 

 gardening as well as in other business. What is 

 and wanted is push, both early and late, wet 

 weather as well as dry. 



Mr. Tapley had thought methods had changed 

 during the past twenty years. Crops that paid 

 then will not pay now. But if the man keeps 

 abreast of the times, today is as good a time to 

 engage in the business as thirty years ago. Pluck 

 is necessary to succeed in the business and there 

 is a good chance if one would look closely after 

 the details. The business is better near smaller 

 cities and towns than around Boston. 



Mr. S. Hartwell: This business is much as far- 

 mers make it. My hobby is fruit; there is less 

 margin now than formerly but we manage to 

 live by doing more business. He would not rec- 

 ommend keeping cows in connection with mar- 

 ket gardening, as the whole of one's time is 

 consumed in taking care of his garden. For- 

 merly, we got from $7 to S8 per barrel for eai-ly 

 Pears; now $3 to $4. Formerly $4 to $5 per 

 barrel for Baldwin Apples; now $1 to $1.2.5, but 

 then we went to market in the night; now we 

 send our stuff to a commission house and 

 live more comfortably. 



Mr. J. Stone: The profits of the business are 

 not so good as thirty years ago and could not 

 blame the young men for leaving the farm. If 

 we had the old EngUsh laws where estates were 

 handed down to future generations it would pay 

 for the young man to stay on the farm. All the 

 money that is made now in market gardening is 

 in the rise and price of land. 



Mr. Hall commencedr,gardening in 1856; thinks 

 that there is as much money in it now as then; 

 for one thing, hired help is better now and there 

 has been a great imF>rovement in the selling of 

 late years. When he commenced it was necessa- 

 ry, after selling his vegetables, to have to carry 



them all over town, up two or four flights of 



stairs, etc.; now it is all changed; we drive our 

 teams into the market the night before and are 

 sold out before ten o'clock the next day, and 

 have the cash fi>r our produce. 



Mr. Derby said he got along with his help better 

 now than in yeai-s gone by as he has a system as 

 to what he expects of his men. They go to work 

 at five in the morning, breakfast at six, and are 

 through at six at night except on rare occasions. 

 He would not liciard help as it makes too much 

 of a slave of the women. He has found that his 

 friends arc no better off today than he is, and 

 they have pursued mercantile pui'suits. 



The discussion being clo.sed a vote of the asso- 

 ciation was taken, and it was the inianimous 

 sense of the meeting that market gardening 

 compared favorably in a pecuniary sense with 

 any other business that a man can pursue. 



A New System of Refrigreration for 

 Fruit Keeping. 



[£. fl. Cnshnian before the recent Ohio Slate Horti- 

 ciiltttral Society Meeting at Troy.] 



It has long been known that by a steady, 

 coltl atmosphere fruits and vegetables 

 could be kept far beyond their natural 

 season and sold at advanced prices, espe- 

 cially Apples, Pears, Grapes, Onions and 

 Potatoes. It is also known that necessary 

 for success are dryness of atmosphere and 

 absence of light; of the last two conditions, 

 dampness has been the most difficult to 

 eradicate, especially where ice was used as 

 the cooling factor. 



The vast commercial movement of our perish- 

 able food products has created a demand for a 

 storage where any temperature down to zero can 

 be steadily maintained together with a dry 

 atmosphere to tide over a glut of perishable 

 products and save producers and holdei-s from 

 the ruinously low prices of.such times. To reach 

 this result the inventive genius of our and other 

 countries have been at work for the past 15 years. 



The first machines were very expensive, dan- 

 gerous and complicated and could only be used 

 at a profit in warm climates far from nature's 

 supply of cold. The principal chemicals that 

 have been employed in the various ice machines 

 are ether, one of the napthas and ammonia; of 

 these ammonia has been the most successfully 

 used, and today forms the basis of the most 

 scientific, practical and economical methods 

 now before the public. 



The Cleveland Automatic Refrigerating Co. is 

 equipped with an apparatus to produce the new 

 freezing agent anhydras ammonia which they 

 use in reducing the temperature of their storage 

 rooms of 260,000 cubic feet capacity. The ma- 

 chinery to a casual observer appears to be a 

 steam boiler and a complicated system of pipes 

 and stills. These are in a separate room from the 

 storage boxes and are used to convert the com- 

 mercial ammonia of 26° to anhydras ammonia, 

 and this (which in its natural state is a gas of 

 about 120 pounds pressure) is liquified and in 

 this state is ready for its work of refrigeration. 



The extreme degree of cold which this ammo- 

 nia water can produce was ver.v forcibly im- 

 pressed upon my mind. Mr. Iddings, the super- 

 intendent, drew about a gill of the liquid from a 

 still into a tumbler and passed the glass to me. I 

 took it between my thumb and finger just above 

 the liquid and held it for a few moments only; it 

 gave the same sensation that buining would. 



I returned the glass to Mr. Iddings and we 

 passed into the laboratory. The bulb of a 

 Fahrenheit mercurial thermometer scaled to 40° 

 below zero was placed in the ammonia; the mer- 

 cury immediately dropped to the bulb and was 

 frozen. The mercury was warmed to 60° and 

 again placed in the ammonia. This time the 

 mercury dropped to zero in 3 seconds and in 11 

 seconds more was again in the bulb. This showed 

 a drop of 100° in 14 seconds by the watch, and by 

 this illustration we can form some idea of what 

 can be accomplished by anhydras ammonia. 



The thermometer was withdrawn, and a tin 

 basin with about a half pint of water was pro- 

 cured and the glass containing the ammonia was 

 placed in it. The water began to congeal around 

 the glass the instant it was placed in the basin. 

 During all this time the Uquid ammonia was seen 

 passing off in its natural state of vapor or gas. 

 We left the tumbler standing for about a half 

 hour; on our return we found the ammonia had 

 evaporated and left the tumbler empty with 

 about an inch of ice surrounding it. 



The liquid ammonia is passed through a system 

 of pipes with which the storage boxes are fitted 

 and in its efforts to regain its gaseous form by 

 evaporation or expansion, it absorbs heat, the 

 moisture condenses in frost on the pipes and a 

 perfect refrigeration is produced. The ammonia 

 gas as it passes from the refrigerator pipes is 

 condensed into the litjuid form with no waste 

 and it is then ready to again perform 

 its circle of duty. 



The refrigerating boxes are about 45x15x8 feet, 

 the walls are lOJ^ inches chick, consistingof three 

 air spaces and one constructed of studding, 

 matched stuff and paper; around the sides and 

 ends of these boxes are the 1J4 inch iron pipes. 

 The amount of pipe per box varies from 10 to 15 

 hundred feet, according to the degree of cold 

 required. These boxes are constructed in ranks, 

 with alleyways between. On the outside, at 

 each door, are two thermometers and a checked 

 card for registering the temperature of the box; 

 one thermometer showing the outside, the other 

 so arranged as to show the inside temperature of 

 each room. The degree of cold can be guaged in 

 the different apartments suitable to preserving 

 the contents of the rooms and the ammonia can 

 be turned on or off the same as steam or gas and 

 otherwise regulated as may be requited, without 

 the least perceptible odor. 



This system of cold stoi-age is in successful 

 operation in St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta, Kan- 

 sas City and Chicago, and the time is not far 

 distant when this system of refrigeration will 

 entirely supersede ice. 



At the time of my visit, Dec. 5, the company 

 had in storage eggs, butter, cheese. Apples, 

 Onions, Grapes, Pears, fish, meat and poultry. 

 Seventy dozen eggs put in storage August 13 and 

 taken out Nov. 23, were candled and only two 

 spoiled ones were detected. 



For Pears it is not to be excelled. I saw as 

 handsome Flemish Beauties as one could wish to 

 look at that had been in storage three months, 

 and I was informed that other varieties kept 

 equally well. Apples were in store but had not 

 been in a sufficient length of time for a test. 

 Catawba Grapes placed in the box Sept. 10 were 

 in excellent preservation; the berries were 

 plump and fresh and the stems were as green as 

 on the day they were taken from the vine. 



This fruit, 15 tons, was placed in the box under 

 very adverse conditions. The baskets were of 

 green timber and at the time the Grapes were 

 gathered the weather was very damp. After the 

 fruit was placed in the bo.x the air resembled a 

 dense fog. Just here comes in one of the strong 

 points of the system and an impossiblity with ice. 

 The pipes condensed the moisture in the form of 

 frost, and in three days the atmosphere 

 was dry and clear. 



The company received a number of sacks of 

 dried Peaches which were placed in storage 

 during warm weather with the very best results. 

 These Peaches were very damp and wormy 

 when received and when taken out they were 

 like newlj' evaporated fruit; the wormy tenants 

 finding the climate not congenial to their tender 

 natures, made a rush tor the door every 

 time it was open. 



If we let the idea take firm hold upon us that 

 this is to be the coming establishment of the 

 future, preserv'lng in time of plenty and low 

 prices for the time of scarcity and high prices, 

 carrying the fruits of one season far into the 

 next, many times saving from waste the bounti- 

 ful harvest we are so frequently blessed with, 

 then we can readily conceive the vast revolution 

 that will take place in our commerce. 



On Rose Forcing: By a Successful 

 Grower. 



[Paper bj/ Pi-csident TT. J. Palmer before the Buffalo 

 Florists' Club.] 



The starting point to successful Rose 

 forcing Is propagation. This should take 

 place during February or March, using cut- 

 tings from well matured young shoots taken 

 from strong healthy plants. 



The cuttings placed in au ordinary sand propa- 

 gating bed having some bottom heat, ought to 

 root in about four or five weeks, then put them 

 in 2]4 inch pots, using good loam five parts, well 

 rotted cow manure, one part, and a little sand. 

 Give them a temperature of about .54° to .56° at 

 night and water carefully, yet at all times giving 

 enough water to keep the leaves from wilting. 

 In four or five weeks repot into three or four 

 inch pots according to size of plants, keeping 



