On the
2d of April we prepared the ground and planted enough garden seeds of
all kinds to produce plants enough for an acre of land. The plants came
up quickly and thrived and were successfully transplanted. A great
victory was thus won over adverse nature and climate. We had sweet corn,
green peas and everything else that a large garden yields a fortnight or
three weeks earlier than we ever had had them before, and in such
abundance that we were able to sell the surplus profitably at the
neighboring village.
The sweet corn, tomatoes and other vegetables were transplanted to the
outer garden early in June. Addison then suggested that we plant the
ground under the haymaker to cantaloupes, and on the 4th of June we
planted forty-five hills with seed.
The venture proved the most successful of all. The melon plants came up
as well as they could have done in Colorado or Arizona. It is
astonishing how many cantaloupes will grow on a plot of ground
seventy-four feet long by nineteen feet wide. On the 16th of September
we counted nine hundred and fifty-four melons, many of them large and
nearly all of them yellow and finely ripened! They had matured in ninety
days.
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