REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] HORTICULTURAL Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper. THE FARMER’S GARDEN. BY J. M. SMITH. A few years ago it was necessary for me to call upon a gentleman upon some business. After my business was completed and I was about to leave, I started toward the garden. He called to me saying, “Do not go there—you can not get through the garden.” I arrived at the border and stopped. He had evidently complied with one of the necessities of a good garden, viz., plenty of manure, for it is simply impossible for weeds to grow at the rate, or attain the size they had there, except upon very rich land. Rabbits would have been perfectly secure from foxes, and foxes from dogs, in that immense and tangled growth of weeds. The owner of that garden was one the best and most enterprising farmers in the State. He had at one time been president of his State agricultural society. Many years ago I visited a friend living upon a 160 acre farm. It was one of the most beautiful section farms that I have ever seen either in this or any other State. While there I was speaking of a splendid crop of melons that were then just ripening. He said, in rather a fretful manner, “I do not see why my melons do not grow. I know the land is rich, and there are no weeds in the hills. I hoed them all up only a few days ago.” I walked out to his garden with him, and there were his poor, puny vines struggling for life. As he said, there were no weeds in the hills, a little circle of perhaps two or three feet in diameter had been hoed out, and the balance of the land was covered with a dense growth of weeds from two to six feet in height. He had a most industrious and refined lady for a wife, and young children growing up around him, and, as before stated, a most excellent as well as valuable farm. Yet not one early pea or one ear of sweet corn; not even early potatoes or a tomato, or, in fact, anything that by any stretch of the imagination could be called a garden bed—yet the man has been to college. Another gentleman said in my presence, “In the spring, at the proper time, I purchase cabbage seed and sow them; when it is time to set them out I buy the plants and plant them; when it is time for cabbages they are _there_, and so I always have cabbages.” He is among the very best farmers in the State. He teaches others how to farm, and does it well. The man who attacks him in a convention needs a strong cause and a ready tongue, or he will be apt to consider his own cause a very poor one before he gets through with it. This man has been president of a State dairymen’s association.