Stretching Time, Collapsing Space: How New Jersey Market Gardeners Used Technology to Control Production, 1838-1876

Abstract

Between 1838 and 1876 New Jersey market gardeners embraced new technologies and methods of cultivation to overcome the obstacles that space and seasonality placed in the way of marketing produce in New York City and Philadelphia. Farmers used technologies like the railroad, the tin can, and the hot bed to alter both seasonal growth cycles and the spatial arrangements between producers and consumers. Through strategies used to manage time and space, these farmers participated in the larger process of modernization that occurred throughout the United States and Europe in the nineteenth century. The fact that modernization was a rural process that market gardeners actively encouraged is important because geographers and social theorists typically define modernization and related issues of time and space as urban phenomena connected to large-scale industrial capitalism. This paper shows that New Jersey’s market gardeners encouraged innovative technologies and contributed to the development of modern industrial culture.