The garden yard

It is well to grow a variety of crops for your own experience and your own table. But for profit, it is best to specialize, because if you read up all you should know about several crops, you will have no time to raise them.

Specialization is the rule now in all lines of business, and as the farmer gets to be more and more a business man, he will adopt business methods, and push ahead. The big farm, partially cultivated, and covered with a great variety of crops which require as many varieties of cultivation to give good results, is a thing of the past, except where some individual farmer is too stupid to read the handwriting on the wall. It never paid as it ought, and it entailed tremendous labor. Now big areas are only cultivated where lots of help is employed, and diversity of crops can only be successfully practiced under the same conditions.

Today the custom of cultivating small areas is increasing, and where it is done for profit, the grower more and more tends to specialize. Secretary Critchfield, of the Pennsylvania State Department of Agriculture, said some years ago that “the greatest amount of money in farming was to be made in specialties,” and that the country boy in deserting the farm was “running away from opportunity.” This has since been proved true, and today it is possible for either girl or boy to make a good living from even a small piece of land, if she or he will only give intelligent attention to the matter.

It requires labor, to succeed in farming, but so does any other calling, if one wishes to master it, and there is no calling that assures so much independence. People must eat, and the food must be grown for them, whether the times be hard or easy; and even should times be so hard that you can’t sell your product freely, you can eat it freely, and you can not be sure of food and room if you are in a shop or in an office. The American farmer and gardener are the nearest to free workers in the world.

The most unlikely things may bring profits when grown as specialties. One man who has a farm in Lewisburg, Pa., is making a good living from raising chestnuts. His profits on their sales average several thousand dollars a year. He made a study of chestnut growing, until he knows a lot about it, and has grafted young trees with Japanese and Paragon chestnuts, thus increasing the quantity and improving the quality of his crop. He has done so well at this, that the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Department has issued a bulletin setting forth in detail Mr. Sober’s method of chestnut culture. If you are interested you can get the bulletin by writing to Harrisburg, Pa., for it.

Mushrooms offer a pretty good opportunity to make money, if careful attention is given to detail, but they are still mighty uncertain wild things. It is impossible to give the details of cultivation of specialties within the limits of a book, but if you apply to the Department of Agriculture you can get much information.

The Department publishes three bulletins which cover the subject:—Cultivation of Mushrooms, No. 204; Food Use of Mushrooms, No. 279; and Growing Mushrooms for Home Use, No. a233. Some mushroom farmers near Wawa, Delaware, according to a report in the Philadelphia North American, are clearing from $2000 to $3000 a year from four or five acres.

Asparagus, celery and many other garden crops lend themselves readily to special cultivation and yield a good profit. So also do onions and even potatoes. One man at least claimed to have produced as many as 3000 bushels of potatoes from one acre in one year. He published a pamphlet setting out his method, but it is now out of print. So big a yield entails too much labor for the average grower, but a third of that number of bushels would yield a handsome income. But, ordinarily, it does not pay to raise potatoes in a small garden.

Mr. C. E. Ford, who lived in Cherokee County, northeastern Texas, tells of raising two such incredible crops of potatoes annually from his land, and his method seems simple as set out by Finney Sprague of Chicago in a small book which was published in 1905.

Mr. Ford had a sandy soil with a clay subsoil three feet below the surface, which he says he ridged up into dykes; then he used immense quantities of cotton-seed for fertilizer as well as liquid manure. One of the important features was his rich fertilizing, and though it sounds expensive when compared with the ordinary quantities of manure used, it is really cheap if anything like such results can be had. Commercial fertilizers suited to potato growing may be used in place of cotton-seed, and the grower claims that the method may be followed from Canada to Texas successfully, securing at least two crops of potatoes a season.

According to his method, the seed used must be of uniform size, running about 80 potatoes to the bushel, and averaging about ¾ of a pound each in weight, smooth and bright. Half of such a potato is used to each hill, or if the potatoes weigh only six ounces, a whole potato is allowed for each hill. For intensive cultivation the potato must be sprouted before planting and for this purpose you need a “sprouting room.” Any room, say 10 × 12 × 7 feet, if warm, dry, double-walled and lighted will serve the purpose; or you can construct such a house with sawdust filling between the double walls and double ceiling, having two windows, and a roof over all: an old ice house would do.

Lay two rows of two by four inch scantling on the dry earth floor, near the sides and across the end of the room opposite the door, and place on them a double row of barrels, each filled about three-quarters full of potatoes, or about three bushels to each barrel. When these have been filled this way, lay scantling across the barrels so as to accommodate other tiers of barrels, until you have about 50 barrels in the room. No earth or water must be used in the barrels; just the plain potatoes. In the centre of the room place your heating apparatus, which may be a small “bake oven” in which one barrel of charcoal will supply all the necessary heat during the four to six weeks of sprouting; or a small stove burning coal or wood so that a low fire may be kept day and night to maintain a temperature of 80° to 90° Fahr., or, even a small oil-stove may be used.

Here the potatoes will sprout and send out rootlets having thousands of small tubers upon them, from the size of a bird’s eye to that of a marble. If you start this sprouting four to six weeks earlier than the ordinary time of planting, you will get your crop just that much ahead of the regular season.

Only the best of seed potatoes are used, and Early Rose is the favorite variety, but Mr. Ford says, “that sort is best which is known to grow best in the section of the country where you live.” In the ordinary culture of potatoes, it requires about 30 bushels of seed to the acre, and 300 is a large yield. By Mr. Ford’s method, it takes 140 to 150 bushels to the acre, and the returns are claimed to be 3000 (three thousand) and more bushels. That is, using four or five times as much seed, you get 10 or more times as large a yield.

If you intend to experiment on this way of planting an acre, let it be as nearly square as possible, which will give you about 70 rows, each about 209 feet long. Ideal potato land is so light that the soil offers little resistance to the growing of the tuber; so thoroughly tilled and filled with humus as to be quite moist without being wet, and so richly fertilized as to contain a very large quantity of plant food.

Starting on the left side of your acre, with a narrow plow, turn a furrow to the left the whole away across; then turn and go back, turning a furrow to the left as you go, far enough from the first to leave a ridge about four to six inches across between them; then go round the whole thing once more, inclining the plow to the left all the way, and guiding it so as to leave the ridge. This will use up the three feet allowed to each row. Continue across the field after the same fashion, seeing that each row is three feet from each other row, and that the unplowed ridges or “balks,” as they are called, are also three feet apart.

Mark the places for the hills on the top of those ridges, placing each hill 18 inches from each other hill. The plowed earth between the ridges is what is turned back to cover seed, to make the hills and to cultivate with afterwards, while the wide ridge affords a good surface for depositing the seed and for the expansion and growth of the tubers.

Two or three days before you intend to plant, harden off your potato sprouts by putting out the fire and opening door and windows until the temperature is as nearly as possible that of the outside. Then, all being ready, have the barrels carried to the potato field, on a hand-barrow by two men, not wheeled on a wheel-barrow. Knock off the hoops and staves, so that the sprouted mother potatoes may be freely but carefully handled.

Separate the mother potatoes with a wooden paddle, as it will do less injury than an iron one. The loss need not be more than 10%. Lift out one mother potato, being careful not to break the sprouts or rootlets. If the potato be a 12-ounce one, cut it in halves lengthwise, not crosswise, so that each portion shall have as many as 15 little tubers on it, so far as you can estimate quickly by counting with the eye. Lay each portion where the hill is to be, on opposite sides of the ridge, with the roots spread down the sides of the ridge, thus making a double hill, planted with anywhere from 40 to 60 little tubers, ready to resume growth at once.

Never plant less than 15 tubers to each hill, and if the half mother has less than that number, add a portion of another mother until you have that many. Only in this way can you estimate how many bushels you will have. If each half has more than 15 tubers plant them all. If you use 6-ounce potatoes for seed, plant the whole mother in each hill. Cover the seed with two furrows of the turning plow.

If the ground has been properly prepared, cultivated and irrigated during drought, practically every one of these tubers will grow to a uniform-sized potato, and 75 to 80 of them will make a bushel. Thus 70 rows with 140 double hills to each row, every hill containing 25 matured potatoes will, he says, give 245,000 potatoes, which at 80 to the bushel means 3060 bushels; if 30 potatoes to each hill, there will be 294,000 or 3675 bushels.

If a second crop is desired, have the mother potatoes ready when the first crop has been marketed and the ground once more thoroughly fertilized. Of course, whether it is first or second crop, the best tillage is none too good. Anything that stops the growth of the tuber at any stage, is fatal to your hopes of a uniform-sized crop, so be sure that there is no danger from drought.

In the case of the second crop, do not allow the potatoes to remain in the ground until touched by frost. This means pretty close watching, as the ripening of the potato is largely a matter of the last three weeks of growth, so they must not be dug too early, any more than too late.

Although this method will give far larger results than any other yet reported, it may not be practicable, nor may it give such phenomenal crops always; still, it is not the only case of enormous crops. As far back as 1828 crops from 900 to 1340 bushels per acre had been grown in England, and in 1884 the Editor of the Rural New Yorker reported a yield of 1391½ bushels from an acre on the paper’s experimental farm. In the light of such figures, the average of 100 bushels looks too mean to be considered. Why not grow more?

Potatoes cease to grow when they become dry, so the grower must see that the land is irrigated, and liquid manure is the best material, although plain water will do, if the soil is richly fertilized. Many growers now plant on flat land and hill up only to counteract too much moisture.

Then there are profits in small fruits if intensively cultivated. Strawberries will always find a market if they are large, ripe, sweet and clean. Anybody can grow small, sour ones, and they will sell, but there is no profit in the price. The market is never so glutted that fine, large fruit will not bring a fancy price. Be sure in picking, to have three baskets on a board, and have the picker assort the berries as picked. Usually, this will about double the price that you can get. A good yield is 6000 quarts per acre, but they have been known to yield all the way from 21,000 to 35,000 quarts per acre. (See “A Little Land and a Living,” pp. 141-143.)

The good price is for the garden product that is better than its kind, and specializing on one thing helps to make you grow the best of that thing. You naturally try to find out all you can about it, and if there is an improved method, or somebody has grown a larger crop than you, you are going to know how he did it. Grow your family vegetables on a portion of your plot, but if there is room at all, save the rest for some specialty.

If you cannot grow crops at all, perhaps you can specialize on raising animals. You have a considerable variety to choose from, because, as I have shown in “A Little Land and a Living,” and also in “Three Acres and Liberty,” there is a market for everything, from bees and poultry to fish and silver foxes. (The foxes were sneered at, first off, but the Department of Agriculture has just published a bulletin on breeding foxes.)