Vol. LXII. No. 2805. 
H PER YEAR 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 31, 1903. 
MARKET GARDENING IN THE CORN BELT. 
An Iowa Gardener Talks Business. 
Doubtless to a great many of the eastern people, 
Iowa is regarded as a region given up to corn and 
hogs, fat cattle and Norman horses, and they are ex¬ 
cusable in this, because when we Hawkeyes want to 
glorify our State those are the things we tell about, 
but along with all this it is a fact that some of the 
finest market garden and fruit-growing regions are 
found here. I live in the southwestern part of the 
State and in a typical corn country. This county 
(Page), with an area of a little over 5,000 square 
miles, grows in a good corn year over 6,000,000 bush¬ 
els of corn, or about 300 bushels for every man, 
woman and child of its population. About half of 
this crop is fed out on the farms to hogs and cattle, 
and the remainder is shipped out either to Chicago 
or the South. The land here sells 
at about $100 per acre and needs 
no fertilizers at all. We think 
that with the help of clover it 
never will. Of course we may 
be mistaken, but it is certainly as 
good now as it was 20 years ago, 
and often better. The typical 
farm here is a quarter section 
(160 acres) of which perhaps 70 
acres will be in corn and the 
rest in pasture and meadow, 
small grain not being grow'u ex¬ 
cept as a necessity for seeding 
clover. Here and there, however, 
in this wilderness of corn and 
hogs, will be found some man 
with a natural bent for trucking 
who makesa comfortable living by 
picking up the smaller lines of 
farming neglected by the big far¬ 
mers. and with the conditions of 
soil, climate and markets that we 
have there is no more favorable 
location to be found anywhere. 
Hy earliest recollections are of 
a passion for gardening, possi¬ 
bly inherited from my father, a 
transplanted Yankee from oil 
Deerfield. My first venture in the 
business was when as a boy of 
eight I begged permission to try 
selling some of the surplus from 
our big family garden. As the 
teams were all in use I had to 
carry the stuff in baskets, and the 
two miles to town was long and 
dusty, but the 65 cents I took in 
that first day probably decided 
my whole future career. I decided then and there that 
gardening held out more inducements to me than 
corn farming, town life or anything else, and now, 25 
years later, I am still of the same opinion, although I 
have drifted into the seed business, which was at first 
laken up as a side line to make profitable employ¬ 
ment during the Winter months, when gardening was 
at a standstill, the Summer still finds me a market 
gardener. 
Our markets are peculiar in that we have no large 
cities, or, for that matter, any cities at all. The 
largest are simply big towns. Des Moines, our capi¬ 
tal, is smaller than Troy, N. Y. This county, which 
is fairly typical of the whole State, has two towns of 
about 4.000 each, and perhaps a dozen smaller towns, 
of, say, 500 to 800 each. Our nearest town, Shenan¬ 
doah, one of the two large towns of the county, is 
made up mostly of retired farmers and the other 
classes peculiar to a country town. It has a college, 
a few small factories, the necessary business men, a 
dozen churches and no saloons. While we cannot 
dispose of the large amounts of green stuff that we 
could if near a big city, we get attractive prices and 
are not subject to the extreme fluctuations found in a 
city market. Then, too, the farmers and stockmen 
of the country round about who consider the grow¬ 
ing of small stuff not worth their while, are ready 
buyers at good prices. Especially in the late Fall, as 
now, they come to the house perhaps a dozen a day, 
for cabbage, onions and potatoes in bulk lots for 
Winter use. They are generous buyers, and always 
have plenty of money. Any trucker can see what a 
trade like this is worth. As a sample of prices, we 
are now getting for potatoes 80 cents, onions 75 cents, 
turnips 40 cents, apples 50 to 75 cents, tomatoes 60 
cents a bushel. Cabbages generally sell by the head, 
but this year they are so large that we sell by weight 
at $1 per 100 pounds. This makes an average of 
about 10 cents a head. When you recollect that 
these prices are at the house, or at the worst two 
miles away, with no express charges or commissions 
to come out, no long night trip to market, and with 
land of inexhaustible fertility, you will see how we 
are favored. Of course we have to grow a variety of 
crops. We cannot specialize on some one crop, as 
we could near a larger market, but with our va¬ 
riety of crops we are less liable to make a complete 
fizzle. If we lose on one we make it back on another. 
Another peculiarity liere is the absence of what 
are known in the East as hucksters. There are no 
men here who make a business of buying up garden 
stuff to sell again. Every grower sells his own stuff 
direct to the customer. Sometimes it is the boss him¬ 
self who does the selling, but more often it is a son or 
some reliable neighbor boy hired for the work. Of 
course good boys, and especially boys with a knack 
for business, are scarce, but we have a big supply of 
the best of native help to draw from, and by some 
shifting we can always find a capable hand. The 
labor problem is much simpler here than in many 
places.' We have no foreigners, no negroes, and no 
“poor whites.” The town furnishes an abundant sup¬ 
ply of boys and young men of what might be termed 
the middle class, who make the best help you could 
ask for. Fruit growing is carried on here mostly as 
a retail business and not much is grown for ship¬ 
ping. Some men, however, have made money at grow¬ 
ing berries and cherries to ship, but the trouble is 
that the good prices we get in the home market spoil 
us for some of the returns the commission men make 
sometimes. henry field. 
EXPERIENCE WITH STRINGFELLOW TREES. 
A Layman's Peculiar IHelhod. 
Last year I told of my experience with Stringfellow 
planting, and am now able to give further particulars. 
I know nothing about horticul¬ 
ture or how trees grow excepting 
w'hat I read in books. Also, I 
am with my trees only about two 
months every year. I am plant¬ 
ing in Rhode Island, where we 
have a large farm, about 450 
acres, and we have so much land 
it is quite a question what to do 
with it, so I took possession of 
an old 20-acre field of light 
sandy loam, which was once in 
rye, about 15 years ago, and is 
now in sweet fern, bayberry and 
various other formations of 
spontaneous growth, such as na¬ 
ture provides when man gives up 
the fight. I bought 120 No. 1 
one-year apple trees, as nice lit¬ 
tle trees as ever I expect to see. 
I cut the roots off, according to 
Mr. Stringfellow’s book, and 
with a crowbar and no other 
tool we stuck them in the 
ground, in November, 1901. You 
may recollect that I made the 
mistake of putting a little hand¬ 
ful of rich barnyard muck in 
each hole and this we think pre¬ 
vented many of them from tak¬ 
ing root. There are about 25 of 
them dead, which I expect to re¬ 
plant this Fall. Of the remain¬ 
der all are alive and doing well. 
Last Winter the rabbits got into 
the place and played havoc with 
the bark of nearly every tree. 
Acting on Mr. Stringfellow’s ad¬ 
vice to do very little pruning at 
the start, I fortunately had, in most cases, one or 
two extra shoots starting from near the ground, so 
that by cutting the tree back where the rabbits had 
eaten the bark, and by taking the new shoot to form 
a new tree, I now have small tree trunks free from 
rabbit bites. Their size is not a fair indication of 
what the trees would have been without the rabbits, 
as the natural growth of the tree was checked, and I 
am making new trees out of what was to be a branch. 
During the first Winter I had my trees mulched with 
salt-water eel-grass (seaweed). I now consider that 
this was worse than useless. During the second Win¬ 
ter I had a light mulch put on of wood shavings, bark, 
sawdust and cthips, such as you will find in your wood- 
yard or where you have been cutting wood or peeling 
posts. We put a good deal of this around every tree; 
it has remained undisturbed for over a year and has 
had a very remarkable effect in promoting the growth 
and healthfulness of the trees. I am going to put it 
around all my Stringfellow apples in future, and 
FAIR SAMPLES OF OCTOBER PURPLE PLUM. Fig. 281. See Page 756. 
Grown in New York State. Picked late August. 
