nS MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Breed weeder and the Bemis transplanting machine. It is true 

 that he tries to get his soil in shape to bring the largest yields, 

 and that he crowds his crops, following one with another in 

 rapid succession, so as to make the most of his opportunities. 

 There is one point, however, in which almost all of us have 

 blundered, and made ourselves guilty of sinful extravagance. 

 This is in the matter of purchasing manures. 



Buying Plant Foods. — Every gardener is a buyer of plant 

 foods in some of their forms. In most cases we have paid 

 excessive prices for them. When the finished product sells for so 

 much less than formerly, the raw materials should be had at 

 correspondingly smaller cost. Yet the general lowering of prices 

 seems to have made an exception in the case of plant food 

 materials. We still pay old time rates, and in many instances 

 even increased ones, for stable manure. This form of plant food 

 is a waste product of stock yards and livery stables. If garden- 

 ers in the vicinity of the cities could agree to be less anxious to 

 buy it at whatever the seller may see fit to ask, the latter would 

 have to sell it for what you — the buyer — might see fit to oifer. 



I myself am more fortunate in this respect than most of my 

 brethren in the gardening and fruit-growing business. By sharp 

 bargaining I obtain first-class mixed stockyard manure, from 

 grain-fed hogs, sheep, horses, and cows, at $17 per large car Avell 

 loaded (capacity of car 60,000 lbs.), delivered here at the station, 

 a quarter of a mile from my gardens. A ton of such manure 

 thus costs me less than 75 cents ; and, at the same rates that 

 we pay for plant food when buying of fertilizer men, is worth 

 easily double that amount. But not everybody has such a chance. 

 In some cases we may be able to draw on home resources, by 

 making composts of dried muck with ashes and bone, or with 

 other forms of mineral plant foods, and using siich composts in 

 place of the stable manure when that cannot be had except at 

 an exorbitant price. I offer this only as a suggestion. 



Concentrated Plant Foods. — The great majority of gardeners 

 also use concentrated plant foods, and sometimes with telling 

 effect. Yet in their purchase we have been careless and extrava- 

 gant. I do not like to antagonize that powerful body of men, the 

 so-called fertilizer manufacturers. We need their cooperation. 

 They have had a mission. Like the nurserymen the}^ had to 

 send their agents among the tillers of the soil to induce them to 



