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1912. 13 REAL FARMERS TILLING NEW YORK CITY SOIL THE SUN, bLNLAY, I.IAT Genuine Reubens Came to Town Long Ago ' and Plant and Hoe Within Municipal Limits -Ground Worth Hundreds of Dollars an Inch Utilized to Raise All Sorts of Produce Till, farmers of New York city are feeling pretty blue theM days. 1 ring Is three weeks late. On Uio face of nature Is the frown thil v m' inline "if. Harden plota look I,,,- tli i Miiitiy cousins of swimming i ! lo th? Minhxttau farmer, lili'i 'j I wjither oyo at the rain t,,,ii i '. i.l-i, tho proswot of a crop of w- 4.-t.ili!"' bcgiin to deem like a ruv i 1 hiiiim1Wp clreani. S .irl is tho last place one would (Mm f looking for tho man with tho hoe. U't Hi 1 here, within tho city limits of (I,,. .' Is greit financial centre, there .in- in it"' more farmers thun bankers. HIS WIPE MADE fie re ml hundred acres of metropolitan f.oil are devoted to the humble purpose of raising onions, cabbages, greens and the like. States Inland Is speckled with market gardens. They could start a thriving grange over there If they wanted to. And It would look well, if perhaps a trifle lonesome, in the city directory's list of organizations to see: 'Grange No. 23, Borough of Richmond. If Staten Island is BpeckM with truok gardens some (woUons cf The Bronx ore broken out with them. Sceptics who want to be con vinced need only take the subway to 2d street and then get a car running up to Yonkers. A little later In the season a census of lettuce heads up In that part of town will run Into the hundreds of thousand.. Around WUUamsbridge there are a lot of French folks with flourishing gardens. And a little further out some enterprising foreigners have Introduced the European ciatom of growing early vegetables under glass globes or bell shaped covers. The Italian belt begins out this way and some of them are wizards when it oomes to making, not two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, but a whole crop of vegetables grow where even weeds had a hard time of It before. Astoria Is another section of New Tork dty where the market gardener flour lihffl like a green bay tree. The Borough lA Queens and all the outskirts of Brook lyn have scores of citizens to whom a potato bug is a far more exciting speci men of animal Industry than the bulls und bears of Wall Street. And so it goes. As our old friend Aleck Selkirk would say, froa the centre all 'round to the sea Father Knickerbocker is monarch of thousands of little farms ail on his own do tstln. These dty farmers are of three kinds: The real ones, who are raising crops for sale; the amateurs, and the children. The second olaas Includes the men and women who are gardening in their own back yards or on some vacant patch of ground in the neighborhood. Perhaps they are partly moved by a love of leeks, a rapture for radishes. But with most of them It Is Just an unconquerable desire to dig In the ground, to gloat over some Crowing green thing no matter how small. Th amateur farmers In town are of both eexee and all classes of occupation. Last year a newspaper man and his wife sublet for the summer an apartment near Riverside Drive. From the dining room window of their new quarters they observed a patch of ground SO feet square and quite unoccupied except by the usual vacant lot crop of miscellaneous trash. It was hidden from the street by a low shed used for storage. With the per mission of the owner the delighted couple went to work. They gleaned and removed the harvest of broken bottles and passe tinware. They had the plot dug up with plokaxes. Modern dynamite ploughing would have been the best method with that rockllkn soil, but it would have made teem unpopular with the neighbors. Married Pair Cot Busy. Both husband and wife got busy with the shovel and the hoe, working early In the morning and In the evening. Com mercial fertilizer was added. In the centre they made a bed of geraniums and the ret of tho plot they divided into four f'lUUT) boda, all poparated by narrow Kravnl -filkn. Thoy bordered all these ljds with sweet ulyssum and panstes I ut devoted the rest of their epaco to t-uowKlwi plantings of radishes, lettuce, fa and Leans, with which thoy supplied "icntM-lvfM with fresh vegetables oil 'imrr.er. Along ono side they put a row "f iwet't eiw bordered with nasturtiums, 1 i tlii) other larlthpurs, uilgnonotte and Anothe r c.iwi of amateur farming in Manhattan was up on University Heights, i.jro tlmm families divided among tliem a neighboring vacant lot, CO by too feet. The owner of the place discovered that his property was being turned Into a miniature truck farm and threatened to sond a rent bill to the amateur gardeners. But he apparently had a wise afterthought on the subject; wise because the lot gulnod In every way by being cultivated. At any rate he sent no bill, so the expense Incurred was for breaking up the soil, for fertilizer and seeds. One of the husbands hadn't a trice of back to the soil yearning in his urban I soul, but his wife made up Tor it. Hhe cultivated their third of the plot her.wlf, digging contentedly in the cool of the evening while her spouse sat on the baok UP FOR IT. porch and smoked with equal satisfaction. In the case of the other conples both hus band and wife labored in their little vine yards, and the three families not only got their summer vegetables off that one lot but reaped a far more Important harvest of health and happiness. According to an agricultural expert who has been working at New York dty gardening for ten years, these amateurs could not have afforded to pay the owner of the lot even enough rent to oover the annual tax on tho property. Be put $5,000 as the value of the lot and skid that the taxes might amount to about tiou. while the value of the vegetables grown on It was only $25 or perhaps even less. In addition there was the cost of the preparation and the fertilizer. He declares that Manhattan soli whloh has not been cultivated for years and which has become as hard as rock needs Ave times as much manure and twice as much commercial fertilizer as country soil. The cost of manure In the heart of New York Is almost prohibitive. A load that would cost only 13 in The Bronx would be worth tlJ at Brooklyn Bridge. It is against the law to store manure in the city, and as It should be of a certain ago (a year old. If possible) to be used as fertilizer, It Is evident that It must be brought In from the suburbs. It Is the cost of transportation that makes It so expensive. Commercial fertilizer, which can be bought of local dealers, Is much cheaper. This man gives WOO as the cost of preparing for cultivation an acre of unimproved land, such as the average vacant lot In a built up section of Man hattan. At least one of the amateur city farmers would laugh this estimate to scorn. He himself raised a summer's supply of vegetables and put some away for winter use, doing It all on as un promising a patch of backyard soli as ever showed Its stony face to the sky, This man was a college professor who suddenly announced to a neighbor his Intention of forgetting Greek roots for a few months and growing some other varieties. When he indicated the absolutely barren little backyard of the house he had just rented as his Intended garden spot the neighbor said things whloh no self-respecting college professor oould stand any more than a small boy oould take a dare. Apparently he felt that the honor of his profession as well as his own reputation for sanity was at stake. What Hot Air Witt Do. My friend.' said he, 'I'll show you what air will do. Hot air? was the reply, which para doxically produced a coolness between those two back yards whloh tempered the heat all summer. But the professor did show what air can do for soil from whloh It has been excluded for years. He worked ohlefly at night because he hated to feel the looks of pity and derision which were dlreoted at his bended bock whenever he worked' by daylight. First he dug up the packed soil and little by little sifted it through a wire sieve he hod for the ashes from the furnace. In this way from a patch of ground only 12 by 14 feet he got a stone pile which filled one corner of the ara almost to cne neignc oi me division fenoe. Qy this process also he thoroughly aerated every inoh of the plot to a depth of about a loot. Without putting ou an ounce of fertilizer he planted his seods, which he got for nothing by upplying to Uncle Sam. By the latter part of May tho family of threo was eating radishes and lettuce from its own garden. During the summer they hud peuB, beans, parsley and beets. The beets had been planted wttn tne iaea ot merely titling the tops for greens. But Duty did ho woll that a fair supply of the vegetable! themselves wuh put away for tin winter. No wuro carrots anu turnips, By replautlngs the family oontlnued to garner Its own radishes, lettuoe and peas throughout the season. One ourious otroumstanoe In ooaneotlon with this garden Is worth recording. Another neighbor had a few hens whloh by some diabolical Instinct promptly discovered that gardening was going on in tne vicinity and with the persistence or their species came over the fenoe to scratch in the upturned dirt. The proud professor, conscious that bis "garden" was an object of local contempt anyway, would not appeal to the owner of the peripatetlo poultry. He vaa particularly hard up just then and hab'd to buy wire netting to keep them out. So he took small stones from his pile in the comer and with them made patterns in the surface of his plot. Just what psycho logical effect this had on the conscious ness of the marauders he could not ex plain. But It Is a fact that the hens oarae, saw and were conquered. They scr.tohed no more In the professorial garden patoh. If the total amount of the city's own land that Is used for farming were known It would be seen that Father Knicker bocker is quite a country gentleman. In the borough of Richmond he has the poor farm, which In spite of Us name la a very good farm of ten or twelve acres. Five farms are run on city propeety on Manhattan Island Itself. It Is true they are not very big. But when it oomes to Intensive farming they can give the rural districts cards and spades, or rather hoes and spades, and walk off with .the prizes. One of these little farms was used by more than 3,000 gardeners last sum mer, and there were only about two acres in the whole piece. The gardeners, it may be explained, were also small. They were school children. The first of these five farms was started just ten years ago by Mrs. Henry Par sons in what is now De Witt Clinton Park. At that time it might have been described as the sink of Hell's Kitchen. It was an open waste plaoe at Fifty-fourth street and Twelfth avenue. While not attractive to anybody else it was the cherished haunt of a local gang known as the Sons of Rest, from their partiality to a life of glorious leisure unbroken except by thieving and trips to Jail. When the polios heard there was going to be a garden on that vacant plot they got ready for extra trouble. The ground there was so hard no or dinary plow oould penetrate it; so the Intrepid Mrs. Parsons secured the use of a street breaking plow and with Its aid the surface was turned up. It proved to be a fearsome conglomerate of bottles, cans, wire, rags and lime, all of whloh was carted off bodily. A second stratum of the same deposit was torn loose with so muoh expenditure of time and labor that the projectors of the scheme finally succeeded in preparing only a space M by 114 feet for cultivation that first year, Instead of the seven acres they had set out to conquer. There was one teacher and practically no tools. The children dug with olam shells. But that first school farm, or school garden, as they are now oalled, worked a transformation in the neighborhood. The Sons of Rest disbanded. More land was cleared in 1903, and that year 277 children raised on their individual plots 80,000 radishes, 1,748 beets, 8S0 quarts of beans and 8,000 heads of lettuce. Two years later the school farm was made a permanent feature of De Witt Clinton Park. In 1809 a garden was established at the Bellevue Hospital grounds to be cultivated by tuberculous children. The next year Publio Sohool 177, In the con gested district near Brooklyn Bridge, got a sohool garden. Bluest of Children's Farms. Last year the latest and biggest of these children's farms In Manhattan was started in Thomas Jefferson Park, on the upper East Side, in the heart of Little Italy, The two acres which were turned nto a syndicated garden of 1,017 plots, averaging about i by 8 feet in size, used to lx a summer bedroom for men of the kind whose room in better than their company. The neighborhood can not bo dosorlled as dull. You could get yourself murdered thero half a dozen times a year if you had tho feline quota of lives and so far forget yourself to bite the Illaok Hunil you were askW to feed, When the Bohool Farm League said it was going to start a children's farm in Mr. T. Jefferson's park the police of that section felt within their brats buttoned breasts the stirring of a profound pity. Part of It was for the leaguers, but most of It was for themselves. In prospect they saw themselves spending the heated term chasing small and large thieves laden with vegetable loot from the Jeffer son farm. But Mrs. Parsens. who is president or the league, and her son, who is secretary and practical adviser, pushed the spring ploughing, laid out the 1,017 little plots and dlreoted the samt number of youngsters from the tcnonienU In planting and cultivating the soil. But 1017 children were scarcely a drop out of the seething bucket of Little Italy. A second crop was planned to follow the harvesting of the first one and a second 1,017 boys and girls got their chance. Those 2,000 children raised tons of vege tables which they and fhelr families ate. What la mors important, the police came at the end of the season and ten dered apologies for their spring attitude of scorn. No trespassing or stealing of vegetables were reported. Three mur ders occurred In the park, but the garden itself seemed to be regarded almost as saored soli. They have a great f esta in Little Italy In the middle of August, at whloh time the already crowded quarter becomes so congested with streams of people from other Italian sections that the streets are almost impassable. In other years hundreds of these visitors were In the habit of spending the night sleeping in the part of the Thomas Jefferson Park which last summer had become the chil dren's truck form. Somewhat uneasy as to what these uiltanders would do when they discovered that their beds were still beds, to be sure, but preempted by growing vegetables, Mrs. Parsons went over there in the evening to see what happened. Not a root trespassed on the trim gar den paths. The low fenoe of wire net ting, only about three feet high, was respected as scrupulously as it it had been a towering barricade with spikes or broken glass on top. Fireworks wore part of the celebration that night and one of the paper balloons oaught fire and fell into the garden. Instead of a mad rush of boy hoodlums looking for an excuse to trespass three lads wont in, carefully removed the burning balloon from the bed It was injuring and retired once more to the outside crowd. Crippled Children Cullitdon. Among the most Interetslng of New York city's farmers are 180 crippled chil dren who have the coveted privilege of cultivating plots In the school farm In De Witt Clinton Park. Thejoy these little folks feel In their gardening la beyond ENVY CHILDREN'S GARDEN. description. Several blind children are also admitted to the rapture of having a plot of their very own, They are helped by the teachers of course, but their sensi tive fingers soon learn to know every cluster of leaves In their own bed and thoy work so carefully in weeding and culti vating that thoy rarely make mistakes. The garden at Hollevuo is a success at growing vegetables but its greater use fulness Is In giving ohlldron with a tuberou lar tendency something to do In the air and sunshine,. The fifth gardon under the direction of the league is In connection with Now York University. It is a plot of ground at 180th street and Aqueduct avenue.- It is perhaps' unlquo on Manhattan Inland in that it haa been "farmed" for about 200 years. It is a part of the old Schwab farm and the soil is by no means a critorlon of what can be done, on vacant lots where the ground had not been tilled for years. Hero thero Is u succession of farm work all through tho Glimmer. On May 0 and Juno 3 Mr. Henry Griscom Parsons, a director of the Department of School Gardens at New York University, gives tho students in tho spring garden course outdoor lessons at this uptown farm. TliebO studentsaro grown men and women, about half of them from tho suburb-. All of them expect to put what they loarn at the coin Mi Into practical use. For six weeks, beginning July 1, a sum mer gardun course, Is givon thero at which teachers aro instructed in school garden work. They lay nut tho regulation plots, preparo tho soil, plant the needs, culti vate und h.irvht the crop. This work was established at tho university with AT THE the aid of private funds la lBOfl and has trained scores of teachers from all over the oountry in the work. Although these five gardens are connected with the otty through the Park Department most of the work done In them la made possible by private contributions. Nobody pretends that if they were a commercial proposition they oould be said to pay. Mr. Parsons estimates that about ten persons can be supplied with their annual supply of vegetables by the average yield ot an acre of ground culti vated with fair returns. To prepare unimproved land on Manhattan Island for cultivation would cost, aooordlng to Mr. Parsons, at the rate of 1500 an acre. Truok gardening, moreover, requires three times sa muoh labor ss ordinary farming. Need of More Sunlight ir all this is true it Is evident that as a money making proposition metropolitan gardening would be anything but tempt ing. The experience of the professor who put his faith in air may, however, bo considered as proof that the man who wonts to put time and trouble, into his back yard does stand a good chance of taking some vegetables out. The great dis advantage of most New York back yards is that they look sunlight. But by choos ing things planted and placing them according to their needs fair results can be secured. Tomatoes, for Instance, grow high if they are trained up on racks. Radishes, lettuce, turnips, spinaoh and beets are responsive even under adverse conditions. Pratt Institute In Brooklyn is to nave a garden this year in connection with lt3 domcstlo, science course.. It will special ize on greens, Almost any kind of greens can bo grown in back yard gardens; spin ach, chard, dandelions und the salads, all of which can )e cooked as well as eorved raw, lieet tops are useful for greens, Mint and horseradish like a oool moist place and oould be grown In a part of tho backyard which might other wise remuln persistently bare. No ono need scorn dandelions. They sold last summer In the markets at 15 cents a small measure, Muuhattun, by the way, is two weeks behind the Brooklyn boroughs as n gurden possibility In Mill at leant, tho Long Island part of Greater New York is lint stun, it is tau(iy arm retains neat to much better than the din of Manhattan does that planting is possible earlier over thero und crops continue, growing much later in the fall, Bronx farmers and thnso on Staten Island have the same condition so far as soil goes (hat Manhattan has or would have if nearer lis original state. VATCHINO FOR TUB FIRST fttWt What osa be Twsi wMa aaty a scant acre is proved by the experience of George G. Bell ot New Roohelle. There are thousands of acres of vacant land Inside the dty limits that are Just as good as the plot whloh four years ago Mr. Bell determined to rescue from the Joint dominion of weeds and blackberry briers. He got an Italian ditch digger to oome every other day for six months and to do most of the work In this patch. The man also weeded the flower beds, mowed the lawn and made a little 'Italian garden" out of another plot whloh they gave him for his own use In the rear of the house. On this scant acre Mr. Bell raised corn. potatoes, peas, beets, lettuoe, parsnips, egg plant, rhubarb, chard, muskmelon, kohlrabi, asparagus, string and lima beans, onions and leeks, summer and winter squash, grapes, raspberries, straw berries, blaokberrles and gooseberries all In sufficient quantity for the needs of the family. The garden pays for Itself, including a fair amount ot labor and fertilizing. What isn't needed for the family goes to help feed a flook of ohiakens that earned 200 per cent, on their cost the very first summer they were owned. Mr. Bell lrf a business man and gives only half an hour of his own time morning and evening to the care of the garden. Rich Westchester Soil. After reading that record one can easily believe the agricultural expert when he says that there is no better soil man tnat or westcnester county tor gardening. Hots on Manhattan Island, in the built up sections, things are differ ent. ir you begin to dig up your da on yard you may have to revise Browning s line about the 'glgantlo smile o the brown old earth" to a feeling allusion to the glgantlo smelt of your particular section of the brown old earth. It is poisoned by gas pipes and sewer drains. As for the vacant lots the soil there Is neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. In other words it Is not loam, nor light loam, nor sandy loam, nor any thing else classified In tho books on agri culture; at any rate not until one digs below the surface conglomerate of rubbish. But one authority on Manhattan garden ing says that If the texture of the soli you want to cultivate Is at fault you can do a whole lot toward Improving it by the simple expedient of saving the coal ashes from the furnace (If you have a back yard the Inference Is that you have n furnace) and mixing mem well with the dirt. Wood ashes mixed with soil will sweeten it if it is sour. And if ono happens to recall the fact that he Is a child of Uncle Sam he can send a little package of earth from his projected garden to a Government experiment station or to the Department of Agrtcul ure at Washington. It will be analyzed tfree of charge and suggestions as to Its treatment will be offered. Another interesting little farm In. New York Is that or the National Highways Protective Society In Sixty-sixth street betwoen First and Second avenues. There are about two acres in this plot, which like the school gardens Is cultivated by the children or the neighborhood. The land is loaned to the society by the owners. It Is an example of the unpromis ing character of the vacant lot proposition In this city as anything except a phllan- WEEDING BEANS threato rmiertalrfng. Tht sep set) fcd beea-sklnned" off this land years ago. It was uneven in surface, with quite a de pression in one part. A contractor was engaged to haul dirt to All not only the hollow but to provide a layer of soil over the whole piece. This dirt probably came from excavations the contractor was making for buildings. When It Is taken from land that has been built on the top part of the soil Is all right. but lower layers are not good. It cost $500 to fill these two acres. Commercial fertilizer was used entirely, partly because It is cheaper and partly because the neighbors objected to the use of manure. It oaa be seen that this sort of thing U not a poor man's job. But it pays as a scheme for growing decent children. One of the most Interesting experiences of any city in this country was that of Minneapolis last year. In the spring tin Oarden Club ot that enterprising town started the movement. Not only the children but the fathers and mothers put their feet to the spade and dug up fo many vacant lots and grew so many vegetables that the grocers actually protested that they were being robbed of a large part of their business. Every vacant lot for a distance of two miles on one of the principal streets was beauti fied with grass and flowers. Six hundred acres of vacant lots were bereft of their ashes and tin cans and other refuse. Billboard lots were cleaned, levelted and sowed to rye. 18,000 Started Home Gardens. But the best of It was that 1(1,000 personn started home gardens In their own yards. Others were started in 825 vacant lots. One of these was In a square whore there lived an American, a Norwegian, two Jewish and two German families. Before the gardening began they had not had anything to do with one another. But at first they lxgan "talking crops' over the fence and llnally they had a garden party all their own. , Yonkers, our neighbor municipality, can tell a fascinating tale of its experi ence with children's gardens. Tho move ment began there in a small way in 1S03 with only thirty-six boys. About 000 chil dren now havo plots; but twlco ns many beg to be allowed to dig In what is for bidden soil to them. The rules require a child to cultivate his plot twice a week. But the experience everywhere is that many of tho children oome every day and hang over thoir little gardens with pathetic devotion. The Yonkerites raised on an average $5 worth of vegetables on the 10 by 16 foot plots. When the gardening season is over the same ground is levelled and used for games. In the winter it is flooded and the children skate on it. This school farm phase of city garden ing is spreading rapidly. In Worcester. Mass., a hideous plaeo known ns Dead Cat Dump was made Into a garden hy the children themselves working under supervision. They cleared it of debris and 800 of them worked thoir little plots. In Cleveland there are eight or more school gardens. Hut Cleveland Is oven more interested in stirring up tho home gardeners, There are now "ienny pack ets' of needs put up for lust these needs. The latest figures of their distribution ore not very recent and mu6t bo multi plied liberally if they nro to be brought up to date. But some Idea or the growth of this metropolitan garden movement can be had from the fact that four years ago more than half a million of them seed packets and over 130,000 bulbs in addition wero distributed from Cleveland alone. TIP-TILTED SILK HAT. Ik