If your land is so situated that you can put your individuality into the crop and can control all the circumstances, preparation of land, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and marketing, your chances of success are immeasurably increased.  As soon as any important part must be trusted to some one beyond your control, danger arises.  Assiduous care in planting, cultivating, and packing will avail nothing if the product falls into the hands of transportation companies or commission merchants indifferent as to what becomes of it.  It is therefore better to be quite independent, sell your own crop, and have the whole operation in your own hands from the very beginning.

Generally speaking, seed growing for the market is a highly developed special business which is usually carried on by companies operating with large capital, able to employ the best experts, and to avail themselves of all the advantages of scientific methods in culture, regardless of expense.  So uncertain is the business, that even with all these facilities, they rarely guarantee seeds.  It is obvious that the amateur has little chance of succeeding in such a difficult business.  Nevertheless, he will be able after a few seasons of increasing experience to gather seeds from selected plants and so furnish his own supply.  It must be borne in mind, however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type natural to it before domestication.

When land is cropped every season, the nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus removed from the soil must be replaced in some form, otherwise you have diminishing returns, while the expense for labor is the same.  In farming small areas for specialties you cannot easily invoke the principle of rotation by enriching the land with legumes, to be plowed under while green, the bacteria on the roots of which gather nitrogen from the air, but you must get stable manure or buy chemical fertilizers to maintain the fertility.

Special crops divide themselves naturally into two classes:  those raised for immediate shipment to market, and those to be hauled to canneries.  The first type are generally prepared in a more expensive way, and need more care and attention.  Each class requires its own special forms of packing to conform to market peculiarities fixed by the taste of consumers.

For the cultivation of all specialties, many items of preparation are identical.  Land must be well drained, it must contain a sufficient amount of humus, or decaying vegetable matter, to make it loose and porous; it must be free from sticks and stones or any foreign matter likely to impede cultivation or obstruct growth.  The proper formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful cropping.  After the land is manured and plowed it should be gone over in all directions with a disk and smoothing harrow, until it is of a dustlike fineness.