Having been much surprised by the profit yielded last year from the garden, I was determined to give it a better chance than ever, and to try the effect of thorough farming on a limited scale. I accordingly set Dick to covering it fully three inches deep with well-rotted stable-manure, of which I had purchased in the city my usual quantity, $200 worth, though hoping that I could so contrive it hereafter as not to be obliged to make so heavy a cash outlay for this material. I then procured him a spade fifteen inches long in the blade, and set him to trenching every inch of it not occupied by standard fruits. These had luckily been arranged in rows in borders by themselves, thus leaving large, open beds, in which the operation of trenching could be thoroughly practised. I estimated the open ground to be very nearly half an acre. I began by digging a trench from one end of the open space to the other, three feet wide and two deep, removing the earth to the further side of the open space. Then the bottom of the trench was dug up with the fifteen-inch spade, and then covered lightly with manure.

Now, a surface soil of a few inches only, will not answer for a good garden. The roots of succulent vegetables must extend into a deeper bed of fertility; and a greater depth of pulverization is required to absorb surplus rains, and to give off the accumulated moisture in dry weather. A shallow soil will become deluged by a single shower, because the hard subsoil will not allow it to pass downward; and again, in the heat and drought of midsummer, a thin stratum is made dry and parched in a week, while one of greater depth becomes scarcely affected. I might cite numerous instances, besides my own, where trenched gardens remained in the finest state of luxuriance during the most severe droughts, when others under ordinary management were nearly burnt up with the heat, growth having quite ceased, and leaves curled and withering for want of moisture.

The ten peach-trees in the garden were thoroughly manured by digging in around them all the coal ashes made during the winter, first sifting them well. No stable manure was added, as it promotes too rank and watery a growth in the peach, while ashes of any kind are what this fruit most delights in. Then the butts were examined for worms, but the last year’s application of tar had kept off the fly, and the old ravages of the enemy were found to be nearly healed over by the growth of new bark. A fresh coating of tar was applied, and thus every thing was made safe.

So much for the garden this year. On my nine acres of ploughed land there was plenty of work to be done. Our old enemy, the weeds, did not seem to have diminished in number, notwithstanding our slaughter the previous year. They came up as thick and vigorous as ever, and required quite as much labor to master them, as the hoe was oftener required among the rows of raspberries and strawberries. My dogged fellow, Dick, took this matter with perfect unconcern—said he knew it would be so, and that I would find the weeds could not be killed—but he might as well work among them as at any thing else. I ceased to argue with him on the subject, and as I had full faith in coming out right in the end, was content to silently bide my time.

Others near me, older hands at the business, did much better, but I thought this well enough. I would prefer raising tomatoes at 37 cents a bushel to potatoes at 75. The amount realized from an acre far exceeds that of potatoes. A smart man will gather from sixty to seventy bushels a day. The expense of cultivating, using plenty of manure, is about $60 per acre, and the gross yield may be safely calculated $250, leaving about $200 sure surplus. If it were not for the sudden and tremendous fall in prices to which tomatoes are subject soon after they come into market, growers might become rich in a few years.

“I think it will not do to complain of high prices now!”

“No,” replied my wife, “the tables are turned. Half a dollar a quart! How much I pity those poor people.”

And as she said this, I handed her a quart bowl of the luscious fruit, which I had been sugaring heavily while she was studying out the figures in the agent’s letter, and I feel persuaded no lover of strawberries ever consumed them with a more smacking relish.

The small boxes were packed in chests each holding from twenty-four to sixty, just nicely filling the chest, so that there should be no rattling or shaking about, or spilling over of the fruit. The lid, when shut down and fastened, held all snug. These chests were taken to the railroad station close by, the same afternoon the berries were picked, and reached New York the same night. The agents knowing they were coming, had them all sold before they arrived, and immediately delivering them to the purchasers, they in turn delivered to their customers, and thus in less than twenty-four hours from the time of leaving my ground, they were in the hands of the consumers. This whole business of conveying fruit to distant markets by steamboat and rail, is thoroughly systematized. It is an immense item in the general freight-list of the great seaboard railroads, constantly growing, and as surely enriching both grower and carrier. For the former it insures a sale of all his products in the highest markets, and in fact brings them to his very door.

In order to send this fruit to market, I was obliged to purchase 3,000 quart boxes, and 50 chests to contain them. These cost me $200. I could not fill all the boxes at each picking, but as one set of boxes was away off in market, it was necessary for me to have duplicates on hand, in which to pick other berries as they ripened, without being compelled to wait until the first lot of boxes came back. Sometimes it was a week or ten days before they were returned to me, according as the agent was prompt or dilatory. Thus, one supply of boxes filled with fruit was constantly going forward, while another of empty ones was on the way back. So extensive has this berry business become, that I could name parties who have as much as $500 to $1,500 invested in chests and boxes for the transportation of fruit to market. But their profits are in proportion to the extent of their investment.

TO strawberries succeeded raspberries. My stock of boxes was thus useful a second time. But raspberries are not always reliable for a full crop the first season after planting, and so it turned out with mine. They bore only moderately; but by exercising the same care in rejecting all inferior specimens, the first commanded twenty-five cents a quart in market; gradually declining to twelve, below which none were sold. I marketed only 242 quarts from the whole, netting an average of 16 cents a quart, or $38.72. In price they were thus equal to strawberries. In addition to this, we consumed in the family as much as all desired, and that was not small. I had heard of others doing considerably better than this, but had no disposition to be dissatisfied.

As my raspberries disappeared, so in regular succession came the Lawton blackberries. I had cut off the tip of every cane the preceding July. This, by stopping the upward growth, drove the whole energy of the plant into the formation of branches. These had in turn been shortened to a foot in length at the close of last season. This process, by limiting the quantity of fruit to be produced, increased the size of the berries. I am certain of this fact, by long experience with this plant. It also prevented the ends of the branches resting on the ground, when all fruit there produced would otherwise be ruined by being covered with dust or mud. Besides, this was their first bearing year, and as they had not had time to acquire a full supply of roots, it would be unwise to let them overbear themselves. Some few which had grown to a great height were staked up with pickets four and a half feet long, and tied, the pickets costing $11 per thousand at the lumber-yard. But the majority did not need this staking up the first season; but many of the canes sent up this year, for bearers the next, it was necessary to support with stakes.

In the mean time the fame of the Lawton blackberry had greatly extended and the demand increased, but the propagation had also been stimulated. A class of growers had omitted tilling their grounds, so as to promote the growth of suckers, caring more for the sale of plants than for that of fruit. Hence the quantity to meet the demand was so large as to reduce the price, but I sold of this year’s growth enough plants to produce me $213.50. Of this I laid out $54 in marl, which I devoted exclusively to the blackberries. I had been advised by a friend that marl was the specific manure for this plant, as of his own knowledge he knew it to be so. A half-peck was spread round each hill, and the remainder scattered over the ground. A single row was left unmarled. It showed the power of this fertilizer the next season, as the rows thus manured were surprisingly better filled with fruit than that which received none. Since that I have continued to use this fertilizer on my blackberries, and can from experience recommend its use to all who may cultivate them.

With the sale of pork, amounting to $58, the receipts of my second year terminated. My cash-book showed the following as the total of receipts and expenditures:

The credit side of the account was much better than last year, and was as follows:

The reader will also be struck with the enormous difference in favor of the second year. But on dissecting the two accounts he will see good reason for this difference. In the first place, some improvement was natural, as the result of my increase of knowledge,—I was expected to be all the time growing wiser in my new calling. In the second place, some expenses incident to the initiatory year were lopped off; and third, three of my standard fruits had come into bearing. The increase of receipts was apparently sudden, but it was exactly what was to be expected. I used manure more freely, and on my acre of clover was particular to spread a good dressing of solid or liquid manure immediately after each mowing, so as to thus restore to it a full equivalent for the food taken away. This dressing was sometimes ashes, sometimes plaster, or bone-phosphate, or liquid, and in the fall a good topping from the barnyard. In return for this, the yield of clover was probably four times what it would have been had the lot been pastured and left unmanured. In fact, it became evident to me that the more manure I was able to apply on any crop, the more satisfactory were my returns. Hence, the soiling system was persevered in, and we had now become so accustomed to it that we considered it as no extra trouble.

It was natural for me to feel great interest in a case like this, so I called repeatedly to see the grounds and converse with the German owner. As it was seven years from his beginning when I first became acquainted with him, his little farm bore no resemblance to its condition when he took possession. There were signs of thrift all over it. His fences were new, and clear of hedge-rows; his house had been completely renovated; he had built a large barn and cattle-sheds, while his garden was immeasurably better than mine. Every thing was in a condition exceeding all that I had seen elsewhere. His two girls had grown up into handsome young women, and had been for years at school. All this time he had continued to enlarge his means of manufacturing and applying liquid manure, as upon its use he placed his main dependence. He had sunk a large brick cistern in the barnyard, into which all the liquor from six cows and two horses was conducted, as well as the wash from the pig-pen and the barnyard. A fine pump in the cistern enabled him to keep his manure heap constantly saturated, the heap being always under cover, and to fill a hogshead mounted on wheels, from which he discharged the contents over his ground. The tub and underground hogshead with which he commenced were of course obsolete. If it be possible to build a monument out of liquid manure, here was one on this farm of eight acres. Its owner developed another peculiarity—he had no desire to buy more land.

As farmers cannot wait for time to perform this office in the manure heap, they should have machinery to do the work. A wooden cylinder, armed with long iron teeth, and revolving rapidly in a horizontal position, with the manure fed in at the top through a capacious hopper, would tear up the clods into tatters, and deliver the whole in the exact condition of fine powder, which the roots of all plants require. To do this would require less time and labor than the present custom of cutting down with either spade or drag. Better still, if the manure could be so broken up as it is taken from the barnyard to the compost heap; the process of disintegration thus begun would go on through the entire mass, until, when carted away, it would be found almost as friable as an ash heap. It is by contact of the countless mouths of the roots with minute particles of manure that they suck up nutriment, not by contact with a dense clod. Hence the astonishing and immediate efficacy of liquid manure. In that the nutriment has been reduced to its utmost condition of divisibility, and when the liquid is applied to the soil, saturation reaches the entire root, embracing its marvellous network of minute fibres, and affording to each the food which it may be seeking.

The same stimulant was freely administered all over the garden, and with marked results. It was never used in dry weather, nor when a hot sun was shining. We contrived to get it on at the beginning of a rain, or during drizzly weather, so that it should be immediately diluted and then carried down to the roots. I have no doubt it promoted the growth of weeds, as there was certainly more of them to kill this season than ever before. But we had all become reconciled to the sight of weeds—expected them as a matter of course—and my wife and Kate became thorough converts to Dick’s heresy as to the impossibility of ever getting rid of them. I was pained to hear of this declension from what I regarded as the only true faith; but when I saw the terrible armies which came up in the garden just as regularly as Dick distributed his liquor, I confess they had abundant reason for the faith that was in them.

As usual, the strawberries came first into market, and were prepared and sent off with even more care than formerly. The money pressure in the cities caused no reduction in price, and my net receipts were $903. An experienced grower near me, with only four acres, cleared $1,200 the same season. His crop was much heavier than mine. If he had practised the same care in assorting his fruit for market, he would have realized several hundred dollars more. But his effort was for quantity, not quality.

Three years’ experience of profit and loss is quite sufficient for the purposes of this volume. It has satisfied me, as it should satisfy others, that Ten Acres are Enough. I give the following recapitulation for convenience of reference: