MANURES. 35 



my experience, the next best concentrated fertilizer is 

 bone dust, or flour of bone ; in careful experiments with 

 our crops of cauliflower and cabbage, we applied it in the 

 same manner as guano, but at the rate of nearly 2,000 

 pounds per acre, and it gave most satisfactory results, 

 surpassing those of guano, where that had been used at 

 the rate of 1,200 pounds per acre. In applying manures 

 to the soil, we have long ago discovered the great impor- 

 tance of an alternation of different kinds. When I first 

 began business as a market gardener I had opportunities 

 of getting large quantities of night soil from the scaven- 

 gers of Jersey City ; this was mixed with stable manure, 

 charcoal, sawdust, or any other absorbent most conveni- 

 ent, and applied, so mixed, at the rate of about thirty 

 tons per acre. The crops raised with this manure were 

 enormous, for two or three years, but it gradually began 

 to lose effect, and in five years from the time we began 

 to use it, it required nearly double the weight of this 

 compost to produce even an average crop. I then aban- 

 doned the use of night soil and applied refuse hops 

 instead, at the rate of about sixty tons per aero, with 

 marked improvement ; but this was for the first and 

 second years only, the third year showing a falling off. 

 About this time our prejudices against the use of con- 

 centrated manures for market gardening began to give 

 way, and at first we applied guano together with manure 

 at the rate of 300 pounds per acre, which we found to 

 pay ; and the next season guano was used at the rate of 

 1,200 pounds per acre with very satisfactory results. 

 Since then our practice has been a systematic alternation 

 of manures, which I am convinced is of quite as much 

 importance to the production of uniform crops of first 

 quality, as is the alternation of varieties of the different 

 kinds of vegetables. 



It is a grave blunder to attempt to grow vegetable 

 crops without the use of manures of the various kinds in 



