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185 <div class="figcenter p6"> <ANTIMG src="images/i014.jpg" width-obs="550" height-obs="399" alt="Our Experience in Crops" /></div> <h2>OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.</h2> <ANTIMG src="images/dca.jpg" alt="A" width-obs="125" height-obs="127" class="floatl" /> few years ago, three brothers, farmers, from Vermont, exhausted by the long, hard winters there, came to Florida to try an experiment. They bought two hundred and seventy-five acres in the vicinity of Mandarin at one dollar per acre. It was pine-land, that had been cut over twice for timber, and was now considered of no further value by its possessor, who threw it into the hands of a 186 land-agent to make what he could of it. It was the very cheapest kind of Florida land. Of this land they cleared only thirty-five acres. The fencing cost two hundred dollars. They put up a large, unplastered, two-story house, with piazzas to both floors, at a cost of about a thousand dollars. The additional outlay was on two mules and a pair of oxen, estimated at four hundred dollars. The last year, they put up a sugar-mill and establishment at a cost of five hundred dollars. An orange-grove, a vineyard, and a peach-orchard, are all included in the programme of these operators, and are all well under way. But these are later results. It is not safe to calculate on an orange-grove under ten years, or on a vineyard or peach-orchard under four or five. We have permission to copy verbatim certain memoranda of results with which they have furnished us. 187 CABBAGES. First Year.—Sowed seed in light sandy soil without manure. Weak plants, beaten down by rain, lost. Second Year.—Put out an acre and a half of fine plants: large part turned out poorly. Part of the land was low, sour, and wet, and all meagrely fertilized. Crop sold in Jacksonville for two hundred and fifty dollars. Third Year.—Three acres better, but still inadequately manured, and half ruined by the Christmas frost: brought about eight hundred dollars. Fourth Year (1871-72.)—Two acres better manured; planted in low land, on ridges five feet apart: returned six hundred dollars. In favorable seasons, with good culture, an acre of cabbages should yield a gross return of five hundred dollars, of which three hundred would be clear profit. 188 CUCUMBERS. First Year.—Planted four acres, mostly new, hard, sour land, broad-casting fifty bushels of lime to the acre, and using some weak, half-rotted compost in the hills: wretched crop. The whole lot sent North: did not pay for shipment. Second Year.—An acre and a half best land, heavily manured with well-rotted compost worked into drills eight feet apart: yielded fifty bushels, which brought two hundred and fifty dollars in New York. More would have been realized, except that an untimely hail-storm spoiled the vines prematurely. Third Year.—An acre and a half, well cultivated and manured, yielded four hundred bushels, and brought a gross return of thirteen hundred dollars. 189 TOMATOES. First Year.—Lost many plants through rain and wet, and insufficient manure. Those we got to the New-York market brought from four to six dollars per bushel. Second Year.—Manured too heavily in the hill with powerful unfermented manures. A heavy rain helped ruin the crop. Those, however, which we sent to market, brought good prices. Third Year.—None planted for market; but those for family use did so well as to put us in good humor with the crop, and induce us to plant for this year. SWEET-POTATOES. Every year we have had pretty good success with them on land well prepared with lime and ashes. We have had three hundred and fifty bushels to the acre. 190 SUGAR-CANE Has done very respectably on one-year-old soil manured with ashes only; while mellow land, well prepared with muck, ashes, and fish-guano, has yielded about twenty barrels of sugar to the acre. IRISH POTATOES. We have found these on light soil, with only moderate fertilizing, an unprofitable crop at four dollars, but on good land, with very heavy manuring, decidedly profitable at two dollars per bushel. Fine potatoes rarely are less than that in Jacksonville. They will be ready to dig in April and May. PEAS May be extraordinarily profitable, and may fail entirely. A mild winter, without severe frosts, would bring them early into market. The 191 Christmas freeze of 1870 caught a half-acre of our peas in blossom, and killed them to the ground. Planted in the latter part of January, both peas and potatoes are pretty sure. We have not done much with peas; but a neighbor of ours prefers them to cabbages. He gets about three dollars per bushel. As a general summary, our friend adds,— "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. 192 "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 193 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 194 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 195 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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