4i8 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
find it necessary to raise a general assortment of vegetables, while 
at the east but few of them do that, but confine themselves to a 
few crops, sometimes to a single one, and often to not more than 
five or six. Hence you will perceive that you will require a more 
general knowledge of your business than would be necessary at 
the east. You have already seen how much care you will need 
in making sales. To sum up this portion of your business, in a 
few words, your eastern friend needs a larger amount of capital 
to commence, and carry on the business successfully, than you do. 
On the other hand, you need a more general knowledge of veget¬ 
able growing than he does, also more skill in marketing your crops. 
My rule for selling is this : Always sell when you can get what 
you know to be a fair price, and a paying one, and not to hold on 
for very high prices. The result is that I rarely get extravagant 
prices for any of my crops, and on the other hand, I seldom sell 
any of them for less than a paying price. 
Let us now turn for a few moments to the expenses of running 
a good sized garden. Here you have the advantage over your 
eastern friend. While a few, say $3,000 to $5,000 would be a 
great help to you, still it is possible, as I know by experience, to 
commence with very little ready money ; while at the east, several 
thousand dollars is an absolute necessity. And the first thing I 
wish to say upon this point is this. If you have any idea of cheap 
tillage, and half culture, discard them at once and forever. If 
your garden contains six acres, better by far to let one-half of it 
grow up with weeds, and thoroughly cultivate the other half, than 
to attempt to cultivate the whole, and one-half do it. I shall 
not deny that a wretched half-sytem, or no system of cultivation, 
will sometimes result in showing a large crop. A kind Providence 
has arranged the natural laws of growth as well as the seasons, in 
such a manner that such will sometimes be the case; but such 
cases are the exceptions, not the rule; whereas you may, and 
you ought so to cultivate your whole field, that large 
crops will be the rule, not the exception ; but to produce this re¬ 
sult, you must spend more labor and more money upon an acre of 
land than is generally given to it. I know very well that insisting 
upon this plan, I am talking against the tide, and against the 
almost universal custom of our whole west, and I fear that I shall 
