Quantities of wild herbs, fruits, and roots that no one eats are
good; the Jesuits had a list of over two hundred kinds that the
Indians ate, but it was lost. Some one can do a great service by
making it up again by research and experiment. Thousands more of the
wild things must be good for dyes, fabrics, and fodder.
Fame like Burbank's and fortune awaits the one who is a good
self-advertiser and can find the use of the poetic daisies,
goldenrod, and thistle, the all-pervading "pusley," and such other
vegetable vermin.
An interesting experiment is conducted in growing tea with colored
child labor, at Tea, South Carolina, by the aid of education and
machinery and the cooperation of the Agricultural Department at
Washington, who will furnish particulars. Whatever may be its
outcome, this will give an opening to some intelligent cultivators,
and it points the way to other fields.
Those who are first in raising new or improved plants find a waiting
market for them.
_The Market Growers Gazette,_ of London, England, reports that Mr.
A. Findlay, Mairsland, Auchtermuchty, Scotland, sold one season to
five leading growers whose names are given five seed potatoes at
L 20 each (which would be, perhaps, $500 a peck). He says
enthusiastically: "It is as perfectly round-shaped a potato as can
be imagined. There is a slight dash of pink on the outer rim of the
eye. My stock of it is very small, only 126 lb. and I do not care to
sell any. If next year's crop yields as well as this year's, we
shall have twenty times that quantity." Mr. Findlay has other seed
potatoes, just as high priced, for which he wants $125 per lb.,
which, he says, "means that I do not want to sell any."
This shows what progressive people think of the real value of good
seed.
It is worth mentioning that "The land on which these are grown is
not highly manured; the only artificial manure that it has received
is about 200 lb. of potash per acre. It has the drawback of being
rather stony."
Of course this is "a fad"; it is doubtful if it will pay any one to
give such prices for seed except to sell to some bigger fool than
himself. Of course, also, the market for a particular fancy thing
may soon be overstocked, but it seems to be a nice thing for the
Findlays meanwhile, and it does good in teaching people to
appreciate good things.
Yet the average potato patcher prudently saves his small potatoes
for next year's seed, which is just as if a breeder were to keep the
colts that were too poor to sell, to be the parents of his herd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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