INTRODUCTION. 19 



of our field -gardens will not command profitable prices 

 for years to come. Our population is increasing faster 

 than we can get these field-gardens prepared for the pro- 

 duction of the choicer kinds of garden products. There 

 is scarcely a village in England or America which is sup- 

 plied with all the fresh fruits, flowers and vegetables 

 which the people would take, if they were furnished in 

 good condition and at moderate prices. 



THE MANURE QUESTION. 



As already said, the real difficulty in starting a field- 

 garden is to get enough manure. We must use all we 

 can scrape up on the farm, and buy all we can get from 

 towns and cities and slaughter-houses, at moderate prices. 

 In addition to this we must plow under a few acres of 

 green crops, and supplement them with liberal purchases 

 of superphosphate of lime and other artificial fertilizers. 

 After we get our field-garden fairly started, it will be a 

 comparatively easy matter to maintain and increase its 

 productiveness. I do not mean by this that we can ever 

 dispense with the use of a large amount of manure. We 

 shall never be able to do so. We may make it cheaper 

 than we do now, or we may be able to use artificial fer- 

 tilizers with great advantage and economy, but the nature 

 of plants does not change. Early cabbages can never be 

 grown early and of fine quality, except on land supplying 

 in available condition an abundant amount of plant food. 

 All we can hope for is to discover how this great store of 

 plant food can be turned to account after we have grown 

 an early crop of cabbages. Our Experimental Stations 

 will, sooner or later, give us valuable information on this 

 point. 



At present we know that it is absolutely necessary to 

 make our field-garden soil excessively rich. We can not 

 adopt high farming in .the production of corn and wheat, 



