10 TRUCK-FARMING AT THE SOUTH. 



CHAPTER II. 

 SOIL AND ITS PREPARATION. 



The requisites the truck-farmer must have in view in 

 selecting a location, are cheap, safe, and expeditious 

 transportation of produce to market, convenience for 

 procuring manure, a soil adapted to the crops he wishes 

 to grow, and sanitary surroundings. Other conditions 

 being*the same, water carriage is preferable to that by 

 wagon. If in the selection of the land, one is confined 

 to a single soil, he should select one consisting of a mix- 

 ture of organic and inorganic matter; a light, deep, sandy 

 loam, with plenty of humus, or vegetable matter. Ex- 

 perience has shown that, without this, crops will not 

 yield as well in proportion to the quantity of manure 

 applied. Locations in the immediate vicinity of the 

 larger coast cities, offering the best facilities in the way 

 of transportation and manure, are in the possession of 

 market gardeners, and such lands are generally highly 

 fertile. The truck-farmer requiring a larger area is com- 

 pelled to locate several miles beyond the corporate limits, 

 on the line of a railroad, or on the banks of a navigable 

 stream. The farm will often be one, the fertility of which 

 has been shipped off to Europe, or the North, in the 

 shape of cotton, by some planter, whose measure of suc- 

 cess was gauged by the rapidity with which he could ex- 

 haust his soil. The renovation of the land will be the 

 first desideratum. To that end, and the consequent pro- 

 duction of remunerative crops, the plowing under of 

 green manures, the application of fertilizers, proper 

 preparation, careful tillage, and deep plowing, will be 

 necessary. With every additional inch of depth in 

 plowing in the first eighteen inches of the surface, 

 the farmer gains six million two hundred and seventy- 



