16 Gf-ARDENIXG FOR PROFIT. 



likely to be successful as workers of the soil. Few 

 of them have any conception of the labor required 

 to be done to insure success. I started business in 

 Jersey City, at the age of twenty-three, with a cap- 

 ital of $500, which it had taken me three years to 

 make as a working gardener. For the first five years 

 that I was in business, I can safely say that we worked, 

 on an average, sixteen hours a day, winter and sum- 

 mer, with scarcely a day for recreation. Now, the 

 majority of clerks, book-keepers or salesmen do not 

 work much more than half that time, and few of 

 them could endure this lengthened strain in a sum- 

 mer's sun, and without this endurance success is out 

 of the ' question ; for all beginners to-day must do as 

 I did, until they get their heads above water, or else, 

 such is the competition, they must go to the wall in 

 the business. I therefore caution all such who are 

 not in robust health to avoid either farming or gar- 

 dening if their necessities require them to make a liv- 

 ing thereby. That the work of the gardener is con- 

 ducive to health, when that has not been impaired, 

 there is no question ; but the long hours of labor and 

 the exposure necessary to success, must tell against a 

 feeble constitution. 



The business of market gardening, though pleasant, 

 healthful, and profitable, is a laborious one, from which 

 any one not a-jcustomed to manual labor would quickly 

 shrink. The labor is not what may be termed heavy, 

 but the hours are long- not less than an average of 

 twelve hours a day, winter and summer. Xo one 

 should begin it after passing the meridian of life ; 

 neither is it fitted for men of weak or feeble physi- 

 cal organization, for it is emphatically a business in 

 which one has to rough it. In summer planting, 

 when it is of the utmost importance to get the plants 

 in while it rams, we repeatedly work for hours in 



