70 Commercial Gardening 



to be governed in most places by the action and reaction of supply and 

 demand in the neighbourhood. A more important thing than the amount 

 of the rent is to get the fact acknowledged in the agreement or lease 

 of tenancy that the land is let for the business and purpose of a market 

 gardener. This will secure the protection of the Market Gardeners 

 Compensation Act, which is now incorporated in the Agricultural Hold- 

 ings Act, 1908. When this is done the cultivator can, without hesi- 

 tation or fear, proceed to develop all the latent cultural possibilities of 

 his holding. He will be wise not to attempt too much at once. Some 

 processes of tillage, while excellent as means of ultimately increasing 

 the productivity of the soil, are expensive to carry out and take some time 

 before the full return is yielded. They mean that capital is locked up 

 for a time. This is all very well provided that the capital can be spared. 

 Where it cannot be, the crippling effect on the finances more than out- 

 weighs the cultural benefit. In the course of some little experience with 

 small holders it has been observed how many make shipwreck through 

 apparent inability to measure accurately the extent of their resources. 

 Some will try to bring all a holding, previously farmed, into market 

 gardening in the first year; with the result that the work is all along 

 master of them: crop after crop is put in weeks behind time. The season 

 finishes with more or less of the land in the undisputed possession of 

 the armies of the weeds and scarcely any crops worth anything. If a 

 part only had been attempted, and the rest farmed, there would have 

 been something tangible to show for the year's work. In a recent case 

 of a County Council small holder who settled upon a holding, left in 

 a filthy condition by the previous tenant, with splendid enterprise and 

 industry he started to fork out the "couch". The result is his holding 

 is poorly cropped, his little capital exhausted. He has cleared a part 

 at tremendous expense of labour, but he has failed to maintain the source 

 of revenue, without which retention of the holding is impossible. A very 

 clever and successful market gardener, who on rich soil close to London 

 had saved a decent fortune, took a farm for his eldest son to market 

 garden. He immediately started to have the whole of it two-spit trenched. 

 The soil was a medium loam on a bed of brick clay. Before the hungry 

 yellow stuff brought on to the top could be induced to yield a crop, his 

 fortune was all spent, and both father and son were ruined. 



Deep Culture. Deep tillage is a splendid thing in the cultivation 

 of vegetables; but before the market gardener, who wants to keep clear 

 of the bankruptcy court, listens to the advice of those who would advise 

 the bringing up of the subsoil, let him try small experiments. Let him, 

 above all things, keep his land cropped. Let him remember that good 

 crops and plenty of hoeing are half the battle in cleaning dirty land. 

 Where land is ploughed, and there is enough horse strength, the subsoil 

 grubber can always be made to follow the plough, except in the rush of 

 summer, when the land cleared in the evening should be recropped the 

 next day. 



