No. 4.] MARKET GARDENING. 15 



that the soil is only 2 inches deep. When Ralph Peters came 

 there from the Pennsylvania Railroad he found a little tract 

 of land, with no iron, no coal, no wood, or in fact anything of 

 value on it. It depended on two things, — the summer 

 boarder, and a few people who wanted to live in the country 

 and do business in New York. The railroad had not paid 

 expenses since it was built. He called me in and asked, 

 " Don't you think anything would grow out there in Suffolk 

 County ? " I said, " Yes." " What do you base it on ? " he 

 asked. I said, " The growth is there now, a great many mag- 

 nificent chestnuts and white pine stumps, and where they grew 

 I think radishes and cabbages will pull through." He asked 

 me how many acres were needed to make the experiment, and 

 I told him 10 acres were enough; I read a book somewhere 

 that said that, but it was really a great deal too much. 



We picked out the worst piece of land we could find, — 

 one that the old residents all agreed was absolutely worthless. 

 The people there had let their land burn over for years before 

 the railroad came, and the railroad had started a good many 

 fires since. This tract was near a village settled one hundred 

 and sixty-five years ago, which at one time had 350 inhabi- 

 tants, and now has about 310, with not a house built for a 

 hundred years. The Sound is full of clams and fish, and 

 nobody worked. They never wanted to go anywhere, and so 

 were perfectly contented. They told me there were not over 

 3 inches of soil there. I knew better than that, for I found 

 a seven-foot chestnut, a 51/^ and a 6 "^^4 foot white oak, and 

 I knew that they grew on that soil. There was really only 

 one thing the soil needed, — humus ; there was no vegetable 

 matter in the soil, it had been burned over every year for 

 years and years. The problem was to get humus into the 

 soil, and this I proposed to do by sowing rye and plowing 

 it under. We made a start on the 7th of September, and to 

 get the land plowed and seeded that fall we had to resort to 

 dynamite to blow out the stumps. We began because it was 

 the quickest way, and kept it up because we found it was the 

 cheapest. The first blast wiped out the tradition of 250 

 years, for it showed 3 feet of the prettiest market garden soil 

 in the world, barring no spot. 



