Quarter Acre Farm, circa 1895

From this article in the New York Times, 1895, about quarter acre farms being supplied to the poor:

"It is estimated that by working twelve days of twenty-four hours each a season's crops can be raised. The men, women, and children who work the farms come at all hours of the day from 4 o'clock in the morning and remain as late at night as they can see."

Also mentioned in the article: compost ("all the old leaves she gathers and puts around her vegetables to enrich the soil") and succession planting ("He is a farmer by profession, and managed his crops so that they matured one after another in succession").