St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1910-06-18
COvNGTON, ST SATURDAY. JUNE 49, 1910

0AlOkDAs, JUNE tS,
sidered as based on experience as well
as practical science. In talk before
the State Horticultural Society Mr..
Tiebout said, among other things:
Diversity your crop. Don't try to
make fortune out of a single vege.
table. If you do, you are going to
fail. For the past few years the
planter has been constantly preached
to on the subject of diversifying his
crop. If it is important for the
cotton planter, the sugar planter or
the rice grower to turn his attention
to other things that may be grown on
his soil, how much more important it
is for the truck grower to diversity
his crop. Take, for instance, the man
who believes in radishes-and nothing
else. It the radishes fail him, or if
radishes are drug on the market
that season, his year is a failure. The
man who succeeds is the man who
diversifies his crop.
Don't be afraid of getting in too
many kinds. Put in ten or twelve
kinds of truck. All of them will never
be failure the same year. It is very
rare that more than two kinds of
vegetables are failure in a single
year. Fifteen years ago I knew moth
ing about the truck business. But l
had the land, and made beginning,
and after the first two years / COM
menced to diversity my crop, and for
about thirteen years have not had one
single loss year. l have never had to
give truck note; never had to beg
indulgence for another year.
"There are two ways to lost money
In truck growing: one is non-produc-
tion, and the other is over-production.
One is just about as bad as the other.
If there is any difference, over-pro-
duction is the worse. In both cases
you are pretty apt to be safe if you
have diversity of crops, for, just as
there is not likely to be complete
failure of more than two kinds of
truck in a single year, neither will
there be over-production of more than
two kinds scarcely ever more than
one; so that if you lose on one, you
break even on another, and make
money on two or three more, which
you will do if you have them, you will
come out ahead.
Zone year ! had ten different crops
and every one made money. Two
years ago was a bad year, and that
year, in returns from fifteen acres,
my receipts were $1,000 better than
the year before. And other truckers,
depending on one crop, wondered why.
You can not convince them, you can
not beat it into them that one cause
OF their failure is because they do not
diversify-because they pin their faith
to one crop. They think they fail be-
cause it is just their luck, or say
something about Providence not being
on their side.
'In line with diversifcation comes
adaptation. You must find the truck
or vegetable suitable to your ground.
Where live, in the 'piney woods, the
soil is as poor as any you can find on
Gods green earth, but while it is all
poor it is not all of the same kind
of poorness. You must study your soil,
and study the plant best suited to
such soil. have some fine land for
radishes that l can not raise beans on,
and some of my best cabbage ground
l can not get a cucumber to grow on.
"The only thing to do is to keep on
experimenting and studying, and when
you find what your land will grow,
then grow that. on it. But do not
think that because certain piece Of
ground grew fine tomatoes this year
that it will grow just as fine next
year. In many kinds of soil it is
necessary to change your plant every
year, or alternate it. For cabbage
you want rich soil. It can not be too
rich, or too deep. Some of my cab
bage ground has soil ten inches
deep.
'You also want to know the proper |
kind of fertilizer to use.'
Il mix my own fertilizer, because l |
get better results in this way. You
buy an already mixed fertilizer and |
you get such and such proportion of |
the different chemicals. Sometimes
it is what you 'want-but generally it
is not. 1 find out what my soil needs |
by experiment. If this year l have
used too much of nitrogen then next
year decrease the preparation of |
nitrogen and increase that of phos-
phoric acid or potash. I use according
to my crop, too.
Cabbage and cauliflower can not
have too much fertilizer, if it is of the
right kind and correctly applied. Two
thousand pounds to the acre is not at
all too much. You always get back
500 for every $40 you spend for ferti-
lizer for these vegetables. have
that I can get back $3.50 an
acre from cabbage grown on ground |