SECTION XV 

 Commercial Fruit Growing 



i. INTRODUCTORY 



The change that has come over the public estimate of fruit and vege- 

 table growing for market is great enough to make one who remembers 

 "things that were" rub his eyes in astonishment. "Has it come to this?" 

 was the greeting of a schoolmaster to a former pupil on suddenly discover- 

 ing him, after leaving school, aproned and trimming parsnips on his father's 

 market garden. Emma Jane Worboise, in one of her stories, to signify the 

 downfall of her heroine, says, she even married a market gardener! Now 

 everyone seems to be crowding into the calling. It is astonishing how 

 many families there are with a son who must have an open-air occupation; 

 and none other appears to rise to the surface on the parental mind except 

 market gardening. Now is the time for charlatans with impudence and a 

 glib tongue to fleece the unwary by taking pupils to teach them a science 

 they themselves do not know, and to practise an art they themselves have 

 never mastered. It may be taken as a well-used modern maxim: "When 

 you fail to make your market garden pay, take in pupils " ! He who 

 chooses market gardening for a calling may be sure of three things: a 

 healthy life; a calling of varied interest, never fully learnt; plenty of real 

 hard work. It may also be set down as a certainty that he will never 

 make a fortune at market gardening. 



A market garden may be wholly devoted to the cultivation of vegetables 

 and flowers, or fruit, or a mixture of all three may be grown. The con- 

 siderations that decide the course to be adopted will be: (a) the size of 

 the holding; (6) the terms on which the holding is held; (c) the nature of 

 the soil; (d) the market to be courted; (e) the knowledge or preference 

 of the cultivator. This much, however, is clear at a glance: the grower 

 of fruit only will have certain seasons of the year when there will be little 

 to occupy his energies, and he will be most dependent upon the moods of 

 our beautifully variegated climate. The first fact will be seen to have an 

 intimate connection with the labour problem; for it is needless to point 

 out that the necessity of employing casual labour for certain seasons 

 only, and then casting it adrift, is depending upon a set of social con- 



jtf VOL. IIL 1 31 



