Excerpt from Market Nursery Work, Vol. 1: A Series of Six Books, on the Cultivation, of Crops for Market Among those who are prone to generalise rather than to reason there is a widely prevailing idea that the principal difference between a nurseryman and a private gardener is one o rough and ready methods as distinct from those of a careful and even a fastidious character. Nothing could well be wider of the mark, and our first step must be to dissipate that fallacy and impress upon all who read these lines the fact that the great nursery establishments of our land are not only not built up on any but precise and scientific methods, but that any attempt to run them on rough and ready lines would most indubitably bring about their undignified appearance in the Bankruptcy Court. The really fundamental difference between the gardener and the nurseryman is purely economic. It is quite safe to say, that prior to 1914 the private gardener, in his laudable anxiety to produce things as nearly perfect as possible, could pursue all necessary operations without being too violently brought into contact with the question of cost, and though he finds his liberty somewhat curtailed in the present days, this still holds good to a certain extent. At the worst, he has only to clear expenses; he is not expected to show a profit. The nurseryman, on the contrary, while turning out products of equal perfection, has to do so with a strict regard to costs, and these must, under no circumstances, exceed that point at which current market selling prices permit him to show a reasonable. Margin of profit. To the one, then, the cost of production is, to say the least, a subsidiary matter; to the other, it is absolutely vital - a distinction with a very appreciable difference. It is well that everyone who aspires to be either a nurseryman or a responsible nursery employee should appreciate the fact that, primarily, he must grow for profit and not for pleasure. Another distinctive feature is that of Quantities. Where the private gardener thinks in terms of dozens and hundreds, the nurseryman thinks in terms of thousands - the gardener knows the limits of his requirements, the nurseryman is ever striving to expand his limits, and his products must keep pace with his expansion. The mind of each habituates itself to the position - one within defined limits, the other enormously elastic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.