Tumbledown Farm .9 Acres (give or take an acre or two)

Gardening for Profit.

CHAPTER I.
THE MEN FITTED FOR THE BUSINESS OF GARDENING

Although we shall here show the business of garden­ing to be a profitable one, let no man deceive himself by supposing that these profits are attainable without steady personal application.

Having been long known as extensively engaged in the business, I am applied to by scores every season, asking how they can make their lands available for garden purposes. The majority of these are city merchants, who for investment, or in anticipation of a rural retreat in the autumn of their days, have purchased a country place, and in the mean time they wish to make it pay; they have read or heard that market gardening is profitable, and they think it an easy matter to hire a gardener to work the place,

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while they attend their own mercantile duties as before. They are usually gentlemen of horticultural tendencies, read all the magazines and books on the subject, and from the knowledge thus obtained, plume themselves with the conceit that they are able to guide the machine.

Many hundreds from our large cities delude themselves in this way every season, in different departments of hor­ticulture; perhaps more in the culture of fruits than of vegetables. I have no doubt that thousands of acres are annually planted, that in three years afterwards are aban­doned, and the golden dreams of these sanguine gentle­men forever dissipated. Although the workers of the soil will not, as a class, compare in intelligence with the mercantile men of the cities, it is a mistake to suppose that this want of education or intelligence is much of a drawback, when it comes to cultivating strawberries or cabbages. True, the untutored mind does not so readily comprehend theoretical or scientific knowledge, but for that very reason it becomes more thoroughly practical, and I must say that, as far as my experience has gone, (without being thought for a moment to derrogate against the utility of a true scientific knowledge in all matters pertaining to the soil), that any common laborer, with or­dinary sagacity, and twelve months' practical working in a garden, would have a far better chance of success, other things being equal, than another without the practice, even if he had all the writings, from Liebig's down, at his fingers' ends. Not that a life long practice is absolutely necessary to success, for I can see, from where I write, the homes at least of half a dozen men, all now well to do in the world, not one of whom had any knowledge of gar-

MEN FITTED FOR THE BUSINESS. 11
dening, either practical or theoretical, when they started the business; but they were all active working men, "ac­tual settlers," and depended alone on their own heads and hands for success, and not on the doubtful judgment and industry of a hired gardener, who had no further interest in the work than his monthly salary.

The business of market gardening, though pleasant, healthful, and profitable, is a laborious one, from which anyone, not accustomed to manual labor, would quickly shrink. The labor is not what may be termed heavy, but the hours are long; not less than an average of 12 hours a day, winter and summer. No one should begin it after passing the meridian of life; neither is it fitted for men of weak or feeble physical organization, for it is emphatically a business in which one has to rough it; in summer plant­ing, when it is of the utmost importance to get the plants in when raining, we repeatedly work for hours in drench­ing rains, and woe be to the "boss," or foreman, who would superintend the operation under the protection of an umbrella; he must take his chances with the rank and file, or his prestige, as a commander, is gone.