May 2.
We have before us a neat little pile of what we call "Palmetto letters,"--responses to our papers from all States in the Union. Our knowledge of geography has really been quite brightened by the effort to find out where all our correspondents are living. Nothing could more mark the exceptional severity of the recent winter than the bursts of enthusiasm with which the tidings of flowers and open-air freedom in Florida have come to those struggling through snow-drifts and hail-storms in the more ungenial parts of our Union. Florida seems to have risen before their vision as the hymn sings of better shores:--
"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, And cast a wistful eye To Canaan's fair and happy land."
Consequently, the letters of inquiry have come in showers. What is the price of land? Where shall we go? How shall we get there? &c.
We have before advertised you, O beloved unknown! who write, that your letters are welcome, ofttimes cheering, amusing, and undeniably nice letters; yet we cannot pledge ourselves to answer, except in the gross, and through "The Christian Union." The last inquiry is from three brothers, who want to settle and have homes together at the South. They ask, "Is there government land that can be had in Florida?" Yes, there is a plenty of it; yet, as Florida is the oldest settled State in the Union, and has always been a sort of bone for which adventurers have wrangled, the best land in it has been probably taken up. We do not profess to be land-agents; and we speak only for the tract of land lying on the St. John's River, between Mandarin and Jacksonville, when we say that there are thousands of acres of good land, near to a market, near to a great river on which three or four steamboats are daily plying, that can be had for five dollars per acre, and for even less than that.
Fine, handsome building-lots in the neighborhood of Jacksonville are rising in value, commanding much higher prices than the mere productive value of the land. In other words, men pay for advantages, for society, for facilities afforded by settlements.
Now, for the benefit of those who are seriously thinking of coming to Florida, we have taken some pains to get the practical experience of men who are now working the land, as to what it will do. On the 2d of May, we accepted the invitation of Col. Hardee to visit his pioneer nursery, now in the fourth year of its existence. Mr. Hardee is an enthusiast in his business; and it is a department where we are delighted to see enthusiasm. The close of the war found him, as he said, miserably poor.
But, brave and undiscouraged, he retained his former slaves as free laborers; took a tract of land about a mile and a half from Jacksonville; put up a house; cleared, planted, ploughed, and digged: and, in the course of four years, results are beginning to tell handsomely, as they always do for energy and industry. He showed us through his grounds, where every thing was growing at the rate things do grow here in the month of May. Two things Mr. Hardee seems to have demonstrated: first, that strawberry-culture may be a success in Florida; and, second, that certain varieties of Northern apples and pears may be raised here. We arrived in Florida in the middle of January; and one of the party who spent a night at the St. James was surprised by seeing a peck of fresh, ripe strawberries brought in. They were from Mr. Hardee's nursery, and grown in the open air; and he informed us that they had, during all the winter, a daily supply of the fruit, sufficient for a large family, and a considerable overplus for the market. The month of May, however, is the height of the season; and they were picking, they informed us, at the rate of eighty quarts per day.
In regard to apples and pears, Mr. Hardee's method is to graft them upon the native hawthorn; and the results are really quite wonderful. Mr.
Hardee was so complaisant as to cut and present to us a handsome cluster of red Astrachan apples about the size of large hickory nuts, the result of the second year from the graft. Several varieties of pears had made a truly astonishing growth, and promise to fruit, in time, abundantly. A large peach-orchard presented a show of peaches, some of the size of a butternut, and some of a walnut. Concerning one which he called the Japan peach, he had sanguine hope of ripe fruit in ten days. We were not absolute in the faith as to the exact date, but believe that there will undoubtedly be ripe peaches there before the month of May is out. Mr.
Hardee is particularly in favor of cultivating fruit in partially-shaded ground. Most of these growths we speak of were under the shade of large live-oaks; but when he took us into the wild forest, and showed us peach, orange, and lemon trees set to struggle for existence on the same footing, and with only the same advantages, as the wild denizens of the forest, we rather demurred. Was not this pushing theory to extremes?
Time will show.
Col. Hardee has two or three native seedling peaches grown in Florida, of which he speaks highly,--Mrs. Thompson's Golden Free, which commences ripening in June, and continues till the first of August; the "Cracker Cart," very large, weighing sometimes thirteen ounces; the Cling Yellow; and the Japan, very small and sweet, ripening in May.
Besides these, Mr. Hardee has experimented largely in vines, in which he gives preference to the Isabella, Hartford Prolific, and Concord.
He is also giving attention to roses and ornamental shrubbery. What makes the inception of such nurseries as Mr. Hardee's a matter of congratulation is that they furnish to purchasers things that have been proved suited to the climate and soil of Florida. Peach-trees, roses, and grapes, sent from the North, bring here the habit of their Northern growth, which often makes them worthless. With a singular stubbornness, they adhere to the times and seasons to which they have been accustomed farther North. We set a peach-orchard of some four hundred trees which we obtained from a nursery in Georgia. We suspect now, that, having a press of orders, our nurseryman simply sent us a packet of trees from some Northern nursery. The consequence is, that year after year, when all nature about them is bursting into leaf and blossom, when peaches of good size gem the boughs of Florida trees, our peach-orchard stands sullen and leafless; nor will it start bud or blossom till the time for peaches to start in New York. The same has been our trouble with some fine varieties of roses which we took from our Northern grounds. As yet, they are hardly worth the ground they occupy; and whether they ever will do any thing is a matter of doubt. Meanwhile we have only to ride a little way into the pine-woods to see around many a rustic cabin a perfect blaze of crimson roses and cluster roses, foaming over the fences in cascades of flowers. These are Florida roses, born and bred; and this is the way they do with not one tithe of the work and care that we have expended on our poor Northern exiles. Mr. Hardee, therefore, in attempting the pioneer nursery of Florida, is doing a good thing for every new-comer; and we wish him all success. As a parting present, we received a fine summer squash, which, for the first of May, one must admit is good growth. And now, for the benefit of those who may want to take up land in Florida, we shall give the experience of some friends and neighbors of ours who have carried through about as thorough and well-conducted an experiment as any; and we give it from memoranda which they have kindly furnished, in the hope of being of use to other settlers.
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OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS.
A few years ago, three brothers, farmers, from Vermont, exhausted by the long, hard winters there, came to Florida to try an experiment. They bought two hundred and seventy-five acres in the vicinity of Mandarin at one dollar per acre. It was pine-land, that had been cut over twice for timber, and was now considered of no further value by its possessor, who threw it into the hands of a land-agent to make what he could of it. It was the very cheapest kind of Florida land.
Of this land they cleared only thirty-five acres. The fencing cost two hundred dollars. They put up a large, unplastered, two-story house, with piazzas to both floors, at a cost of about a thousand dollars. The additional outlay was on two mules and a pair of oxen, estimated at four hundred dollars. The last year, they put up a sugar-mill and establishment at a cost of five hundred dollars.
An orange-grove, a vineyard, and a peach-orchard, are all included in the programme of these operators, and are all well under way. But these are later results. It is not safe to calculate on an orange-grove under ten years, or on a vineyard or peach-orchard under four or five.
We have permission to copy _verbatim_ certain memoranda of results with which they have furnished us.
CABBAGES.
_First Year._--Sowed seed in light sandy soil without manure. Weak plants, beaten down by rain, lost.
_Second Year._--Put out an acre and a half of fine plants: large part turned out poorly. Part of the land was low, sour, and wet, and all meagrely fertilized. Crop sold in Jacksonville for two hundred and fifty dollars.
_Third Year._--Three acres better, but still inadequately manured, and half ruined by the Christmas frost: brought about eight hundred dollars.
_Fourth Year_ (1871-72.)--Two acres better manured; planted in low land, on ridges five feet apart: returned six hundred dollars. In favorable seasons, with good culture, an acre of cabbages should yield a gross return of five hundred dollars, of which three hundred would be clear profit.
CUCUMBERS.
_First Year._--Planted four acres, mostly new, hard, sour land, broad-casting fifty bushels of lime to the acre, and using some weak, half-rotted compost in the hills: wretched crop. The whole lot sent North: did not pay for shipment.
_Second Year._--An acre and a half best land, heavily manured with well-rotted compost worked into drills eight feet apart: yielded fifty bushels, which brought two hundred and fifty dollars in New York. More would have been realized, except that an untimely hail-storm spoiled the vines prematurely.
_Third Year._--An acre and a half, well cultivated and manured, yielded four hundred bushels, and brought a gross return of thirteen hundred dollars.
TOMATOES.
_First Year._--Lost many plants through rain and wet, and insufficient manure. Those we got to the New-York market brought from four to six dollars per bushel.
_Second Year._--Manured too heavily in the hill with powerful unfermented manures. A heavy rain helped ruin the crop. Those, however, which we sent to market, brought good prices.
_Third Year._--None planted for market; but those for family use did so well as to put us in good humor with the crop, and induce us to plant for this year.
SWEET-POTATOES.
Every year we have had pretty good success with them on land well prepared with lime and ashes. We have had three hundred and fifty bushels to the acre.
SUGAR-CANE
Has done very respectably on one-year-old soil manured with ashes only; while mellow land, well prepared with muck, ashes, and fish-guano, has yielded about twenty barrels of sugar to the acre.
IRISH POTATOES.
We have found these on light soil, with only moderate fertilizing, an unprofitable crop at four dollars, but on good land, with very heavy manuring, decidedly profitable at two dollars per bushel. Fine potatoes rarely are less than that in Jacksonville. They will be ready to dig in April and May.
PEAS
May be extraordinarily profitable, and may fail entirely. A mild winter, without severe frosts, would bring them early into market. The Christmas freeze of 1870 caught a half-acre of our peas in blossom, and killed them to the ground.
Planted in the latter part of January, both peas and potatoes are pretty sure. We have not done much with peas; but a neighbor of ours prefers them to cabbages. He gets about three dollars per bushel.
As a general summary, our friend adds,--
"For two years in succession, we have found our leading market-crops handsomely remunerative. The net returns look well compared with those of successful gardening near New York. Cabbages raised here during the fall and winter, without any protection, bear as good price as do the spring cabbages which are raised in cold-frames at the North; and early cucumbers, grown in the open air, have been worth as much to us as to Northern gardeners who have grown them in hot-beds.
"The secret of our success is an open one; but we ourselves do not yet come up to our mark, and reduce our preaching to practice. We have hardly made a good beginning in high manuring. We did not understand at first, as we now do, the difference between ordinary crops and _early_ vegetables and fruits. Good corn may be raised on poor land at the rate of five or ten bushels to the acre; but, on a hundred acres of scantily-fertilized land, scarcely a single handsome cabbage can be grown. So with cucumbers: they will neither be early, nor fit for market, if raised on ordinary land with ordinary culture. Most of the market-gardening in Florida, so far as we know it, cannot but prove disastrous. Land-agents and visionaries hold forth that great crops may be expected from insignificant outlays; and so they decoy the credulous to their ruin. To undertake raising vegetables in Florida, with these ideas of low culture, is to embark in a leaky and surely-sinking ship.
If one is unwilling to expend for manure alone upon a single acre in one year enough to buy a hundred acres of new land, let him give a wide berth to market-gardening. Such expenditures have to be met at the North; and there is no getting round it at the South.