102 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Makch, 
Imps, the most successful cultivator in the vi¬ 
cinity of New York. At least, I much doubt if 
more money has ever been made off the same 
number of acres in the same space of time than 
has been done by him. As some of the points 
in the history of such a man may be interesting 
to the thousands of your readers who cultivate 
the soil, I will briefly give them. 
On a biting cold day in the montli of January, 
some fifteen years ago, John Reilly, then about 
19 years of age, clad in a rough grey frieze and 
corduroys, and just landed from an emigrant 
ship, asked me for a job. I was full to over¬ 
flowing with help, as we usually are at such a 
season, but he was such a likely “ boy,” that I 
made room for him. His wages for the first 
year were only $100, the next perhaps $130. 
But up to this time I had seen but little of him, 
as he had been sent under a foreman to the 
place he now owns, which was some miles re¬ 
moved from my residence. Suddenly, one day, 
my old foreman died, and my garden, in full 
crop and working eight men, was without a 
leader. My practice had ever been, and still is, 
to select my overseer from the working hands, 
if possible; accordingly I passed these eight 
workmen through an examination, and without 
much hesitation decided that Reilly was the 
only one fitted to lead, though yet scarcely 
twenty-one. But I had hardly placed him in 
charge when trouble began; hands that had 
been with me for half-a-dozen years, and almost 
old enough to be his father, refused to obey his 
orders and resented his authority, aud my hith¬ 
erto peaceful garden bid fair to resemble Donnv- 
brook on a small scale. I tried to conciliate, 
but to no purpose. John here developed his 
self-reliance, and showed his early genius as a 
commander. He insisted that all the old hands 
be discharged, and that their places be filled 
with men whom he could control. I hesitated, 
being loath to discharge trained men when I 
could only fill their places by green ones; but 
increasing difficulties made such a course a ne¬ 
cessity; accordingly it was done, and from that 
time there was peace. John now had a chance 
to show his ability, and rapidly he did it. The 
garden, under his superintendence, soon be¬ 
came a model for the neighborhood; always 
clean, orderly, and having luxuriant crops, and 
worked at less expense than any of us had 
worked before. This was owing, in part, to 
the rigid discipline he enforced with his men, 
but more particularly to a manner of working 
them, peculiarly his own, and from which I be¬ 
lieve he has not since deviated. He never al¬ 
lowed his men to separate, always working 
them in a body, himself leading; and no mat¬ 
ter whether it was a job requiring an hour or a 
week to finish, he always moved them together, 
so that all were under his eye. Such manifest 
ability soon reaped its reward. In four years 
John had saved $3,000 from the salary I paid 
him. He was then too rich to work for any 
one; and believing that the chances were a 
hundred to one that I could not replace such a 
man, I sold out the land and crop to him at a 
price that made his interest and taxes over 
$2,000 a year. Such a load would have daunt¬ 
ed most men, but not such as he. In four years 
he had paid every dollar of principal—over 
$20,000—every cent of which he had made in 
that time from the product of these 8 acres of 
Jersejr soil. He was now firmly on his feet. 
He bought another 8 acres, which he has long 
since paid for, so that now he is certainly worth 
$60,000 in real estate alone, two-thirds of which 
have actually been paid for from the product of 
those 8 acres of land in eight or nine years. 
Proud may the man be of a fortune so honestly 
come by, dug by hard labor from old mother 
earth! We know that such amounts seem 
small to the mercantile community, and that 
our “self-made man” among these must have 
his millions before his history is thought worth 
recording; but the energy of mind and body 
necessary to accomplish so much in so short a 
time, in such a pursuit as gardening, may have 
been greater than that displayed by those who 
have attained greater fame. 
-*» « — ni ra -^- ai i —» «»• .. 
How to Have a Good Garden. 
BY “walks and talks.” 
A correspondent asks me how he shall go to 
work to have a good garden. If he had asked 
me last fall, I could have told him. To have a 
really good garden it is necessary to prepare the 
land the summer or autumn previous. But 
even without this preparation a good degree of 
success may be attained the first season. 
The first thing to be done—and it should not 
be delayed a moment—is to prepare the manure. 
Select the richest manure you have, and that 
which is the shortest and most thoroughly rot¬ 
ted. Throw it up into a large, loose, conical 
heap, the wider and broader and deeper, the 
better. If it is too dry, throw on some liquid 
from the stables. In a few days, if it is horse 
or sheep manure, it will commence to heat, and 
in the course of a week or ten days, it may be 
turned over. In the meantime order half a ton 
or a ton of pure bone-dust. I would calculate 
to put on at the rate of twenty-five tons of ma¬ 
nure and half a ton of bone-dust per acre. 
Turn the heap of manure, and while doing so, 
scatter a sprinkling of the bone-dust on each lay¬ 
er, say a bushel to the ton at first, and then, as 
the heap ascends, not quite so much, or it will 
not hold out. And if it does not, it will be 
none the worse, as the ammonia, generated from 
the lower layers, will be more likely to be re¬ 
tained by the upper portion. If it is not moist 
enough, water it with the drainage from the sta¬ 
bles or yards, or if this cannot be had, with 
water. Or throw on soapsuds, and if they are 
warm, all the better. Hot water, or anything 
that will warm the heap, will accelerate fermen¬ 
tation and reduce the manure. 
Ordinarily, it would be better to take a longer 
time and let the fermentation proceed more 
moderately. But now we cannot afford to 
wait. We shall soon need the manure. But 
no matter, a little skill and judgment will pre¬ 
vent waste. Water has a strong attraction for 
ammonia, and if the heap is kept almost to the 
saturating point, little or no ammonia will es¬ 
cape. But you must not put on too much, or it 
will cool the heap so much that fermentation 
will be arrested. It is here that judgment is 
required. If you have any genuine superphos¬ 
phate on hand, you may have an opportunity of 
using it to good advantage. That is to say, the 
bone-dust and the manure, if both are good, 
will ferment very rapidly, and possibly ammo¬ 
nia may escape (though if due precautions are 
observed, it is not likely). In this case, put a 
pound or so of superphosphate in a pail of wa¬ 
ter, stir it up, and throw it all over the top of 
the heap, or where the steam is escaping the 
most rapidly. The acid phosphate will instant¬ 
ly arrest the ammonia. Plaster, in solution , 
will do the same thing—the only trouble being 
that only a very little of it can be dissolved. 
But it is worth while putting a little plaster in 
all the water that is thrown on to the heap— 
say a tablespoonful in each pail of water. 
More than this will not be dissolved, though if 
more is added, it will do no harm. 
When fermentation begins to slacken, turn 
the heap again, and break up all the lumps. 
The finer you can make it the better. Be sure 
to keep it moist enough. If it ferments slowly, 
mix some sandy soil with it. Clay soil will ar¬ 
rest fermentation; sand will accelerate it. 
This treatment should give you as good and 
rich a heap of well-rotted, fine manure, as ever 
was put on a garden. 
In applying manure, the great aim should be 
to incorporate it as completely as possible with 
the soil. It is not easj'to do this unless the ma¬ 
nure is thoroughly reduced before it is applied 
to the soil. If it is plowed in, be very careful 
in spreading it to break all the lumps. And it 
would be well, if it can be done, to harrow it 
after it is spread. If the harrow pulls it into 
little heaps, spread them out again and knock 
them to pieces before plowing them under. 
The first thing I do in the garden is to sow 
peas. I want peas every day from the middle 
of June to the first of August—and I have 
them; and so may you and every other farmer. 
I think I have heard an occasional whisper in 
the kitchen to the effect that it is a good deal 
of work to pick the peas and shell them—but I 
am a little deaf at such seasons. And I believe 
if you will grow’ the peas, they will not be al¬ 
lowed to go to -waste, or if they are not used, 
they will be good for seed. As soon as the frost 
is out of the surface-soil, three or four inches 
deep, I sow a quart of Carter’s First Crop, a 
quart of Waite’s Caractacus, and half a peck 
of Early Kent, or Daniel O’Rourke. I make 
the rows four feet apart, and set out some young 
cabbage plants, wintered over in a cold-frame, 
between the rows. I make the rows four inch¬ 
es deep, but do not cover the seed more than 
an inch deep with soil, but I put on three or 
four inches of horse manure on top. If the soil 
is not very rich, I would work in a good dress¬ 
ing of the well-rotted manure, prepared as 
above directed. Early peas want rich land, and 
they should also be sown very thick—say a 
quart to a row fifty or sixty feet long. 
On warm, sunny days, rake off the manure 
and let the sun warm the light covering of soil 
on the peas, and warm the manure at the same 
time. Toward evening, rake back the manure 
on the rows to protect them in case of frost. 
When the peas begin to sprout, rake a little 
light, warm soil on top of them, mixed with a 
little manure, and keep doing this as the peas 
grow, until the soil and manure covers them an 
inch or so higher than the surface of the ground. 
Then hoe the soil up on each side the row, two 
or three inches higher than the peas. This will 
afford considerable protection from cold winds. 
When the peas get three or four inches high, 
draw up the soil on each side of the row in a 
broad ridge, leaving a wide space between, and' 
then pole the peas. A farmer can get the nicest 
kind of pea-brush from the woods, which, if 
properly taken care of, will last two or three 
years. The more side branches on the poles, and 
the nearer the ground, the fewer poles will be 
required. Trim them up, fan-shaped, and sharp¬ 
en the ends so that they will go easily into the 
ground. Put them on each side of the row, and 
let them be narrower at the bottom than at the 
top. It is a very common mistake to have 
them closer at the top than at the bottom. 
They should be at least six inches apart at the 
top. The sun can then get among the vines, 
and they will pod better and ripen earlier. 
For the main crop of peas, it is better to wait 
until the ground gets in good working order— 
