No. 4.] TRUCK FARMING. 83 



and it does $2,500,000 worth of business. The other is an 

 organization of about 1,500 members, and their secretary and 

 treasurer told me the other day that their business for this 

 year amounted to a Httle over $5,500,000. I might say in that 

 connection that practically every State that has taken up this 

 work has taken it up with the hearty co-operation of the people 

 who are interested in it. Market growers or vegetable growers 

 or truck farmers, — by whatever name you call them — must 

 get behind the proposition to make the proposition fairly suc- 

 cessful if they want to get the benefit of it. 



Mr. Howard. Professor Johnson spoke about malnutrition in 

 regard to raising a spinach crop. I would state here that we 

 have had a good deal of trouble with the spinach yellowing at 

 times in the fall, and at times in the midsummer. Can you 

 give us any information on that? 



Professor Johnson. That is one of the troubles we are 

 working on now, and have been working on for the last two 

 or three years. That yellowing of the plant is one of the 

 hardest propositions we have had to meet in our spinach 

 troubles. We have done this: wherever we have used the wide 

 rotation and used a good deal of lime we have not had much 

 trouble; where we have used close rotation and neglected to 

 use the lime we have had a good deal of trouble. 



Question. Do you have mold on the spinach? 



Professor Johnson. We have done some work on spraying 

 spinach when it was young, but of course you understand there 

 would be objection to spraying spinach with Bordeaux mixture. 

 Mold has not proven very detrimental to us yet. We have it in 

 some of our fields. It is largely a question of cleaning the fields 

 and preventing the introduction of the disease from other fields 

 or from other sources where the disease may be spending some 

 of its time. There is a question again of plantation sanita- 

 tion, as we might put it. 



Mr. Howard. I think there are a number of truck farmers 

 here, and market gardeners around Worcester and Boston who 

 are present at this meeting. We certainly have troubles enough 

 in regard to producing good crops. One of our big problems 

 has been the looking after sanitation in the soil, — to keep the 

 rubbish out of it. I would like to get Mr. Hittinger to say a 

 few words in regard to what he has accomplished in that line. 



