350 



J6tjfeNAt OF fioMiCULTtJEE AND COTTAGE GABDEKER. 



[ May 2, 1872. 



never wink, and wiugs that never are weary, and foi all tins 

 thcv have no compensation but the precarious chance of piofat. 

 No shuttinK-up shop with them between seed-time and harvest, 

 wurtours ^of pleasm-e or instruction between ; no very bx^cing 

 climate to live in ; no field or cover shooting; no hunting, or 

 otl"r country "port; very Uttle sympathy between the employers 

 and employecl, and none of those patriarchal associations tha^ 

 iielp to maL a countiy life pleasant, even when it is not veiy 

 profitable. 



In the discussion which foUowed, Mr. J. Bb.u>sh.vw, KJ^owle, 

 GuSdford, said three weeks ago he was in the neighbourhood of 

 Sandba b which was contiguous to the pottenes, and he found 

 that fanners were tliere able to sell their straw at i5 a-ton, 

 crops oFSabbages and other vegetables were sent to the pottenes 

 and the iron districts, and if that had not been aUowed the 

 owners of the soil and the tenant-farmers would not have reaped 

 Ihe advantages they were doing (hear, hear). He maintained 

 that every district must be farmed according to the locahly. the 

 soil, and the demand which there was for a particular produce, 

 and that it was impossible to lay down any hard-and-fast rule. 

 He was the originator of a tariff for the conveyance by railway 

 of manure from London— good night-soil, mixed up with a 

 certaiu proportion of street sweepings to enable it to be trans- 

 ported. In his neighboui-hood they could not get that down to 

 the fann under *2 10s. per ton, thirty-eight miles, cost and 

 canal carnage included; whereas similar manure could be sent 

 to Scotland for 7s., cost and freight per. barge, after landing 

 Potatoes in the Thames ; and that was a kind of manure which 

 possessed those constituents which were required for the proper 

 cultivation of vegetables in the vicinity of London. As regarded 

 fruit-TOWmg, he might remark that he resided on a loamy soil, 

 about^uine miles to the east of Guildford, and that he had for 

 some years been very successful in growing Norinandy and 

 Brittany Peais. He had produced a description of Pears whic-h 

 were very nearly equal to the Pears of Normandy, which, he might 

 add could not be produced of the same flavour in the neighbour- 

 ing locaUty of Worplesdeu. On the other hand, they produced at 

 -Worplesden certain Pears with a better flavour than we could 

 obtain. He mentioned that merely as shomng that the soil and 

 climate of a district must be considered if a man wished to farm 

 iivotitably He would allude for a moment to the Potato culture 

 of Lancashire. He could remember a period, fifty or sixty years 

 a-o ho boin" a child at that time, when members of his family 

 used to send every year a present to Surrey of-what did they 

 thiuk ■> An early growth of Potatoes ; and at that time that 

 was oae of the most acceptable presents that could be received 

 in London or the county of SuiTey. He beUeved that if farmers 

 who were contiguous to London would only consult the character 

 of the soil which they had to cultivate, they might compete 

 successfully with some of the continental growers of fruit, and 

 obtain very good returns for the outlay of capital and labour ; 

 whereas, on the other hand, if they attempted to produce what 

 the soil was not adapted for, the result could not be otherwise 

 than unfortunate. . , ,, r, i.,. j.i i iu 



The Ch,\iem.\x said he qiute agi-eed wath Mr. bcott, that tney 

 must look carefully to congeniality of soU. He well recol- 

 lected hearing Mr. Hope state in that room, while speaking of the 

 growth of Celerv with the assistance of sewage manure, that 

 something Uke i'jO per acre could be obtained m that way. The 

 crops of Onions which he had seen grown at Biggleswade, in 

 Bedfordshii-e, quite confii-m Mr. Scott's opinion, that pecuUar 

 soils were required for particular plants. They all knew that 

 the largest, finest, and best crops of Onions in the world were 

 -obtained in that locality. Again, he woidd remark that what he 

 was saying was confined entirely to fanning, and that he was 

 not speaking of gardening. In the district of Coggeshall, in 

 Essex, they would find a few fields entirely covered with Parsley 

 and others with Cucumbers, and if they went out shooting in 

 the autumn they might often see an old hare sitting under a 

 yellow Cucumber. He had seen a small district where Migno- 

 nette and Sweet Peas were grown together. That might seem 

 a funny crop for a fann to produce, but he had known cases in 

 which it would produce ilOO per acre, and that showed the im- 

 portance of taking care to produce the proper crop on peculiar 

 soils. 



Mr. M.uiSH, Sandwich, said: Although he had seen something 

 of fruit-growing in Kent, he was not himself a fruit-gi'ower, at 

 all events only to the extent of half-an-acre of Apples or some- 

 thing of that. Kent was, as they all knew, famous for its Cherry 

 orchards. In looking over an old chronological Kentish work 

 some years ago, he found it stated that in 1.540, at Teynham, 

 near Sittingbourne, a Cherry orchard of 32 acres produced in 

 one year i'lOOO. It did not appear whether that sum included 

 the Cherries alone or the land as well, but in either ease that 

 was a very large amount to be paid 330 years ago. In his own 

 neighbom-hood, Sandwich, market gardening had lately pro- 

 gressed with great strides. They had sent large quantities of 

 Broccoli and other vegetables to Birmingham and Manchester, 

 and the returns had sometimes been wonderful. As regarded 

 Onions, he must say the return seemed very uncertain. For 



example, whereas last year Onions fetched 8s. or 9s. a-bushel, 

 this vear they were comparatively worthless. Goosebernes and 

 Cherries were largely gi'own in his neighbourhood. Many acres 

 of land were employed in that way, and when that was the case 

 the market gardener was knocked over, as it were, in companson. 

 It was not uncommon for such a person to pay ±'4 or i5 an acre 

 for his land, and besides that to spend a very large amount on 

 guano. A sliort time ago he asked a person m that position, 

 who was a first-rate manager, how he made it pay, to vvhich he 

 replied " Well, if I can get my Cabbages to market a few days 

 earUer than my neighbours, although I may have used four or 

 five, or even six hundi-edweight of guano per acre, the money 

 is soon repaid." . , . 



Mr M. Reynolds, Warden, Biggleswade, said he lived in a 

 part of Bedfordshh-e where vegetable cultivation was very 

 largely carried out ; the parish of Sandy was the originator, as 

 it might be termed, of market gardening. They had heard a 

 good deal about certain soils being adapted for the gi-owth ot 

 particular vegetables. The soil of the pansli of Sandy was of 

 a most varied description. A portion of it was a very fine 

 aUuvial soil; another, and a larger portion, was no doubt ongiu- 

 ally a very poor sand ; the remainder, and perhaps by far the 

 larger proportion, comprised some of the strongest Jand in iScd- 

 fordshire. Up to about twenty years ago this latter descnption 

 of land was hardly thought of for gardening pui-poses, but having 

 been well drained, he beUeved it was some of the most profit- 

 I able land in Sandy at the present time. They had heard that 

 evening of very high rents being paid by market gardeners, in 

 his neighbom-hood they knew nothing of i20 per acre, ±'lo, or 

 even ±'10. Some land at Biggleswade was let at iS an acre, but 

 that rent was confined to about 100 acres in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of a railway station ; and from his loiowledge of 

 the neighbourhood, he should say that the rents of land let for 

 gardening varied from £S to ±'6 an acre. As regarded the price 

 of labour, he believed that the wages paid by gardeners in that 

 district were not as gi-eat as many gentlemen appeared to suppose. 

 He did not thiuk that any gardener in the winter season paid 

 more than '2s. a-day for labour. In the spring of the year and 

 in busy times, gardeners paid 2s. 6d. a-day and gave their men 

 two pints of beer each, and perhaps in very busy times they 

 might pay as much as 3s. a-day ; but he believed that with that 

 exception 2s. 6d. a-day was the extreme amount that a market 

 gardener's labourer obtained. They worked the usual number 

 of hours ; if they worked extra hours they were no doubt paid 

 extra. As regarded crops, he remembered a period when 

 Potatoes and Onions were the principal garden produce grown 

 in his neighbourhood, but he did not think they were now 

 able to compete with Cornwall and the Channel Islands for 

 early Potatoes. The earUest Potatoes grown in his neighbour- 

 hood were Shaw Potatoes, and they did not come in suflicientiy 



"'^Mr. Revkolds said the two crops that were grown in his 

 neighbourhood most largely and apparently to the greatest ad- 

 vantage, were Turnip seed and Cucumbers. The great principle 

 of market-gardening was high manuring. The quantity of 

 maniu-e that was put on the land would astomsh many who did 

 not live in a gai-den district. He had known as much as 60 tons 

 per acre to be put on garden land; 100 bushels of soot per acre 

 was a usual di-essing. He thought the only way m which 

 gardeners could protect themselves was by growing a variety of 

 crops. Of late years there have been considerable failures m 

 several of the garden crops grown by the smaller class of 

 gardeners ; but on the other hand, where the crops had been 

 varied, and cultivation had been carried on upon a large scale, 

 as was now the case in Bedfordshire, the result had generaUy 

 been remunerative.— (/oHriiaJ of the Farmers' Club.) 



Simpson's Wokiley Celehy Collar.— This is made of brown 

 paper, and one is to enclose each plant. Such excellent 

 authorities as Mr. Rose, the Queen's head gaa-dener at Frog- 

 more; Mr. Speed, the Duke of Devonshii-e's gardener; and Mr. 

 W. Thomson, of the Tweed Vineyard, anticipate that it will 

 be very useful in preventing the soil penetrating and injuring 

 the hearts of the plants during the operation of earthing 

 them up. ^ 



Leptosyne oigahtea (Kellogg).— In a recent number of the 

 Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences we note this 

 new plant described, and we judge it is one weU worthy of 

 culture as an ornamental-leaf plant for the open ground. It 

 is a plant of the Aster or Composite family. It is a perennial 

 with a woody stem rising about 10 feet high. The growth is 

 so rapid, Dr.'Kellogg says, that the concentric annual growth is 

 often half an inch thick. The branches thicken at the ends like 

 clubs. The plant seems full-grown at 10 feet high. In blossom 

 it is said to be siumouuted with a broad canopy of golden 

 flowers of great magnificence and beauty, giving oil a honey- 



