The Punta Gorda herald. [volume] (Punta Gorda, Fla.) 1893-1958, 1918-01-03
ONLY THREE ACRES
WILL YIELD ENOUGH
For the Support of One Family in
Florida
DADE FARMER SUCCESS
Cultivating Less Than Three A
cres in Various Kinds of Vege-
tables, He Sells at Home and
Makes a Good Living

A few months ago, the Miam
Metropolis contained a very in
teresting report of the success
which a Dade county farmer Is
making, though he cultivates only
two and a half acres of land. The
following are extracts from the
report:
Two and a half acres of land is
enough for a South Florida gar.
dener who will practice intensive
cultivation, crop rotation and
bring that area to its greatest pro-
ductiveness, is the opinion of W.
H. Owens of Allapattah, whose
success with garden crops in that
section for the last four years has
been an object lesson in the posi-
bilities of market gardening in
Dade county.
Growing vegetables on land that
has a market value of 81, 900 per
acre, and making it pay, would be
ridiculed as an impossibility in
most sections of the world, but Mr..
Owens has done it, and is doing it
again this year. just how much
he has made it pay, he refuses to
divulge, but he has kept books
carefully on every crop he has
raised, and says the only reason he
does not want to put into print
anything as to the profits he has
taken from his two and a half a
cres of muck prairie, is because
the figures would be so large as to
need explanation, and the explain
alton would entail a detailed de-
scription of his methods of plant
ing, fertilization, cultivation,
spraying and crop rotation that
would be too technical and
lengthy for the columns Of a news
paper.
Gardening is Mr.. Owens bust
ness, and he says it is good busi-
ness. A Pennsylvania by birth,
he grew truck for years in the vi
cinity of Pittsburg. Later he
farmed in Kansas, but the expe-
rience gained in the North and
West, he admits, was of little val
ue to him when he began trucking
in Dade county.
"The first thing any northern
farmer must learn" says this sue
cessful trucker, is that the soil,
and the conditions under
which he is working are wholly
different from those he has known
elsewhere; and the sooner he un-
learns most Of the things he has
learned in the North, the better
for him. This idea of many
who come here that
they can plant and grow the same
crops they grew in the North, in
the same way, is the cause of more
failures than any other single OBJ
Stacle encountered by growers in
South Florida.
"Take strawberries, for in
stance. In the North we set out |
plants one year, let them make
and mat over the beds, |
and pick the berries the following
year. Then, very often, we take
,he second year runners and trans
plant for a new bed. Down here,
though, they have to be handled
n an altogether different way.
The best success that has been
made with strawberries in Dade
county has been in setting the
plants in the fall, picking the crop
within a few months, and blowing
,ut the old plants after the first
,rop is gathered. | have had some
in setting plants early in
he fall, pinching off the blossoms
o prevent them from bearing, and
ransplanting the runners from
hese plants for bearing beds, but
ny experience is that it pays to