TOTAL $10.60

The wheel hoe is a great saver—­of backache, especially to the beginner; as Warner says, “at the best you will conclude that for gardening purposes a cast-iron back with a hinge in it is preferable to the ones now in use.”

The dibble, an old tool handle, or a bit of broomstick sharpened, and garden lines to get the rows straight, labels, tomato supports, plant protectors and stakes earl all be homemade out of old material.  The full outfit would include the following: 

Roller $8.00
Wheel-hoe with seeder 8.50
Sprayer 3.75
Wheelbarrow 4.00
Crowbar 1.50
Weeder .35

For such crops as admit of horse cultivation a horse hoe will save a great deal of time.

The weeder is a cousin to the push hoe and has a zigzag blade for cutting off young weeds which are just starting above ground.  It is pushed backward and forward and cuts both ways.  It is very good for soft ground; on a harder patch use the push hoe.

A market garden is really a big kitchen garden, from which the cultivator supplies not only his own family, but his neighbors, the public.  To run a successful market garden for profit, land suitably situated near transportation and markets, a large supply of stable manure, hotbeds for raising plants, crates for shipping, wagons for delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary.  You must raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quantities sufficiently large to justify you in giving your whole time to the work.  An acre devoted to general market gardening could be attended to by two men with some extra help for marketing.

To get a place fully established on new, rich land requires two or three years.  On worn-out land it would take longer to build it up to the high fertility needed for maximum production.  Crops like asparagus and rhubarb take two years to establish on a remunerative basis.  If bush fruits are raised, three years are required to get maximum results.  So in starting, land should be bought outright or leased for ten years.

In market gardening for profit, one acre might be devoted to vegetables, one acre to small fruits; strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, etc. and one acre kept for buildings, poultry, etc.  An energetic man could clear one thousand dollars a year besides his living, after he got a start, and be absolutely independent; that is, unless some predatory railroad corporation could confiscate his profits before his product reached the market.

Some persons are just naturally so successful with plants that if they stuck an umbrella in the ground we should expect to see it blossom out into parasols—­but they don’t know why it does, and they can’t teach any one else how to do it.

Any fool can sneer at “book farming” or at anything else, but you can hardly succeed without the best books by practical men.  Do not let some experienced ignoramus talk you out of experimenting under their guidance.  You will learn little without experience, and unless you have the grower’s instinct, you will learn less without books.