FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
133 
tion where the owner could sell his pro¬ 
duce at the station. He had his entire 
tract irrigated with the Skinner system, 
which I should judge, cost him several 
thousand dollars. But one thing he did 
not have. He did not have his land prop¬ 
erly cleared. He had spent thousands of 
dollars buying his land, fencing it, putting- 
in an up-to-date irrigation system, and 
had taken out very few, if any, of the 
stumps and roots. Think of it, having 
everything up-to-date and plowing around 
stumps, which not only kqpt his land 
acid, but doubled his labor bill. These 
could have been removed with a few 
days' labor, a stump puller, or a case of 
dynamite. This man made a failure and 
he had no' one to blame but himself. 
Another cause of failure in trucking in 
our State comes from not having a com¬ 
plete irrigation and drainage system. This 
is one of the most important things in 
the vegetable business. You must have 
a system that will not only supply your 
crops with water when they need it, but 
take off.the surplus water when they are 
getting too much. It is the dry weather 
and the excessive wet weather that makes 
short crops in this country, and the grow¬ 
er who has a complete irrigation and 
drainage system, has an insurance against 
both of these. When crops are short, they 
are naturally high, and it is not an unusual 
thing to see a grower who has an up-to- 
date system of drainage and an irrigation 
system pay for same in one season. If 
you will show me a man in the vegetable 
business in Florida who has his land in 
good shape, well drained and irrigated, 
nine times out of ten, I will show you a 
man who is making not only a good living, 
but has a nice little bank account. 
The improper use of fertilizer is an¬ 
other important cause of failure. Time 
and again I receive letters from growers 
who want to know what is the matter 
with their crops, and when I ask them a 
few questions, I find they applied their 
fertilizer and did not give it long enough 
in the ground before planting the seed. 
There is only one make of commercial 
fertilizer that I know of that can be sown 
and planted upon immediately; the others 
require from seven to ten days before the 
seed can be planted. Another point about 
fertilizing that a great many truckers do 
not watch is, that when they have planted 
on porous soil and get a heavy rain that 
washes the fertilizer out of reach of 
the roots or feeders, they do not apply 
more fertilizer at once. The fertilizer 
they had in the ground is gone and un¬ 
less the plant receives something to feed 
upon, it is bound to go backward. I have 
always advocated applying only part of 
the fertilizer you wish to use, to a crop, 
at a time. You not only do away with 
the chance of the fertilizer being washed 
out of the soil, but you g*et better re¬ 
sults from its use. Another point, some¬ 
times overlooked, is that the analysis of 
the fertilizer should not only suit the 
crop, but the soil as well. 
Many vegetable growers think it mat¬ 
ters not where they buy their seed, so long 
as it is the right variety. They think it 
will make a good crop, but this is not the 
case. Take, for instance, sweet corn; 
if you use Western grown sweet corn in 
Florida, you will not get as good a crop 
