COMMERCIAL GARDENING 



watcher immediately sets about imitating his neighbour, 

 and congratulates himself upon his smartness when he 

 also has secured a stack of the gold-producing variety. 

 Then, too often, he discovers that while he has been 

 " watching," others have been doing the same thing, 

 and where a few had a profitable market, the many 

 bring about a state of affairs in which the prices 

 scarcely pay the cost of production and carriage. 

 Beyond that he also finds that the man who had the real 

 " smartness 99 was the one who secured the first command 

 of the market, and who by the time the "watcher" is 

 preparing to imitate him is on the look-out for something 

 to take the place of the crop or variety which has 

 rendered him such good service. 



Variety Trials 



A business man cannot indulge in " fads " ; that is 

 not the originality which is requisite. Neither can he 

 be a scientific experimenter on a large scale unless he 

 is prepared to pay for his amusement. But it is in the 

 power of every grower to be a practical experimenter, 

 and one of the departments to which he can profitably 

 turn his attention is the testing and comparison of 

 varieties. Occasionally, under special circumstances, it 

 may even pay him to become a raiser of varieties for 

 his own use, though in a general way it answers better 

 to let the large seedsmen or wholesale dealer perform 

 this work. Hundreds of market men in the principal 

 centres grow their own selections of Tomatoes, Cucum- 

 bers, and many vegetable crops, but they find it exceed- 

 ingly difficult to prevent deterioration, and sometimes 

 this proves a serious matter when the crop is grown 

 extensively. For instance, in one district where Cab- 

 bages are cultivated for the early spring markets on a 

 large area of land, it is customary for the growers to save 



D 



