SPECIALTIES.
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.
[Illustration: A SHELTERED SUBURBAN GARDEN PATCH.]
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.)