"For two years in succession, we have found our leading market-crops
handsomely remunerative. The net returns look well compared with those
of successful gardening near New York. Cabbages raised here during the
fall and winter, without any protection, bear as good price as do the
spring cabbages which are raised in cold-frames at the North; and early
cucumbers, grown in the open air, have been worth as much to us as to
Northern gardeners who have grown them in hot-beds.
"The secret of our success is an open one; but we ourselves do not yet
come up to our mark, and reduce our preaching to practice. We have
hardly made a good beginning in high manuring. We did not understand at
first, as we now do, the difference between ordinary crops and _early_
vegetables and fruits. Good corn may be raised on poor land at the rate
of five or ten bushels to the acre; but, on a hundred acres of
scantily-fertilized land, scarcely a single handsome cabbage can be
grown. So with cucumbers: they will neither be early, nor fit for
market, if raised on ordinary land with ordinary culture. Most of the
market-gardening in Florida, so far as we know it, cannot but prove
disastrous. Land-agents and visionaries hold forth that great crops may
be expected from insignificant outlays; and so they decoy the credulous
to their ruin. To undertake raising vegetables in Florida, with these
ideas of low culture, is to embark in a leaky and surely-sinking ship.
If one is unwilling to expend for manure alone upon a single acre in one
year enough to buy a hundred acres of new land, let him give a wide
berth to market-gardening. Such expenditures have to be met at the
North; and there is no getting round it at the South.
"Yet one can economize here as one cannot at the North. The whole
culture of an early vegetable-garden can go on in connection with the
later crop of sugar-cane. Before our cabbages were off the ground this
spring, we had our cane-rows between them; and we never before prepared
the ground and planted the cane so easily. On another field we have the
cane-rows eight feet apart, and tomatoes and snap-beans intervening. We
have suffered much for lack of proper drainage. We have actually lost
enough from water standing upon crops to have underdrained the whole
enclosure. We undertook to till more acres than we could do justice to.
In farming, the _love of acres_ is the root of all evil."
So much for our friend's experiences. We consider this experiment a most
valuable one for all who contemplate buying land and settling in
Florida. It is an experiment in which untiring industry, patience, and
economy have been brought into exercise. It has been tried on the very
cheapest land in Florida, and its results are most instructive.
Market-gardening must be the immediate source of support; and therefore
this experiment is exactly in point.
This will show that the land is the least of the expense in starting a
farm; and that it is best, in the first instance, to spend little for
land, and much for the culture of it.
Thousands of people pour down into Florida to winter, and must be fed.
The Jacksonville market, and the markets of all the different boarding
establishments on the river, need ample supplies; and there is no fear
that there will not be a ready sale for all that could be raised.
Our friends are willing to make a free contribution of their own
failures and mistakes for the good of those who come after. It shows
that a new country must be _studied_ and tried before success is
attained. New-comers, by settling in the vicinity of successful
planters, may shorten the painful paths of experience.
All which we commend to all those who have written to inquire about
buying _land_ in Florida.
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