INTRODUCTION. VII 



The practical farmer or gardener readily detects the ring 

 of this spurious metal, and excusably looks upon all such 

 instructors with contempt. To this cause, perhaps more 

 than any other, may be attributed the wide-spread preju- 

 dice against book-farming and book-gardening, by which 

 thousands shut themselves off from information, the pos- 

 possession of which might save years of useless toil and 

 privation. 



I have some pride, under present circumstances, in say- 

 ing, that I have had a working experience in all depart- 

 ments of gardening, from my earliest boyhood, and even 

 to-day am far more at home in its manual operations than 

 its literature, and have only been induced to write the fol- 

 lowing pages at the repeated solicitations of friends and 

 correspondents, to whose inquiries relative to commercial 

 gardening, my time will no longer allow me to reply in- 

 dividually. The work has been hurriedly written, at 

 intervals snatched from the time which legitimately be- 

 longed to my business, and therefore its text is likely 

 to be very imperfect. I have endeavored, however, to be 

 as concise and clear as possible, avoiding all abstruse or 

 theoretical questions, which too often serve only to confuse 

 and dishearten the man who seeks only for the instruction 

 that shall enable him to practice. 



Although the directions given are mainly for the market 

 garden, or for operations on a large scale, yet the amateur 

 or private gardener will find no difficulty in modifying 

 them to suit the smallest requirements. The commercial 

 gardener, from the keen competition, ever going on in 

 the vicinity of large cities, is, in his operations, taxed to 

 bis utmost ingenuity to get at the most expeditious and 



