72 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



valuable, — you might hurt it if you made it give up any of its 

 plant food." Third, one must have a good area under glass 

 to provide a winter market, and one must be reasonably close 

 to the city. Now, all I have to say is, that it takes more 

 money than I have been able to hoard, and more labor than 

 I care to board, to run a garden on the rules laid down by 

 some of your expert gardeners. The book farmers and the 

 scientific men tell me that in every acre, one foot deep, of 

 that sandy farm, there are seven thousand pounds of nitrogen, 

 four thousand pounds of phosphoric acid and seventy-six 

 hundred pounds of potash. They also tell me that in the air 

 above each acre there are so many tons of nitrogen, worth over 

 three thousand dollars a ton. As I am not a scientist, I do 

 not find it convenient to dispute these statements ; and I 

 must say that the more I work upon that soil and that air, 

 the more I am inclined to think they underestimate the 

 amount. I saw no reason then, and I see less now, why this 

 immense store of plant food should not be utilized. We have 

 worked on the farm with that end in view. I know that some 

 of our scientific men tell us that, while we may grow crops 

 of wheat or grain in that way, we cannot produce profitable 

 market-gardening crops in the same manner. All I ask is 

 the chance to be permitted to differ with them. 



Our plan as been to produce crops that compete least with 

 the large market gardens. With us, such crops are straw- 

 berries, sweet corn, Lima beans, potatoes, squash, tomatoes 

 and small fruits. We try to work the land so as to make it 

 as nearly self-supporting as possible. We have bought what 

 seems to us the best combination of tools with which two 

 men and one team can do the greatest amount of work. In 

 winter we study to keep the stock which will give the greatest 

 return for the labor of our two men. We did not buy stable 

 manure at first, because we had only a limited amount of 

 money, and preferred to invest it in tillage tools and fertili- 

 zers. Our first crop was a light one, but it was all grown 

 with fertilizers. Our soil is light and free from stones, and 

 therefore our tools are mostly of the harrow or cultivator 

 type. We plough but little, most of our work being done 

 with the new style Cutaway harrow. We like to dig and kick 

 the ground over, rather than to turn it completely over with 



