8 Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming. 



and tend to keep in their native places the young men who now 

 leave them to better themselves. Immigrants would come at busy 

 times, as they come to the Essex and Bedfordshire market-garden 

 farms, as they go turnip-hoeing and harvesting in various 

 counties, as they come into Kent for fruit-picking, potato-digging, 

 and hop-picking. The additional culture of vegetables, within 

 certain limits, would not much clash with ordinary farm work, 

 and would, if well managed, ensure constant employment for 

 labourers all the year round. Now it happens frequently 

 that unremunerative work has to be found at some periods 

 of the year for the regular staff. Upon ordinary farms a staff 

 has to be maintained principally for the important operations 

 of turnip-hoeing, hay-making, and corn-harvesting. Vegetable 

 culture could be arranged to work well in with these seasons. 

 Much of the lighter work, as picking peas, pulling and bunching 

 onions and carrots, could be done by women, who could also 

 wash those vegetables that required washing, in sheds or barns, 

 and bunch them and pack them for market. There would be 

 plenty of work for the staff of labourers in winter in sending off 

 stored carrots, or stored potatoes, or onions, or parsnips, or 

 celery, or protecting radishes or lettuces, gathering Brussels 

 sprouts, and in various other ways. 



Vegetable culture is supposed to require almost fabulous 

 quantities of manure. Without any doubt the system of grow- 

 ing vegetables practised by market-gardeners near London, who 

 are not satisfied unless they get two exhausting crops in a year 

 from each part of their holdings, entails immense manurial 

 applications. As much as 30 tons of farmyard-manure are put 

 on per acre for some crops, and even 50 tons per acre for celery. 

 Upon two market-gardens visited in Essex, the average annual 

 cost of manure was in one case 10/. and in the other 11/. per acre. 

 On the other hand, upon a profitable market-garden farm visited 

 in Essex the average annual cost of manure was only 2Z. 10^. 

 per acre ; yet all the crops on the 200 acres, including cabbages, 

 peas, Lisbon onions, broad and French beans, potatoes, wheat, 

 oats, were remarkably good. Crops of vegetables taken in rota- 

 tion with corn and other crops do not require more manure than 

 mangolds, or swedes, or beans. Neither does it follow that farm- 

 yard-manure is indispensable. Upon the market-garden farms 

 in Essex large quantities of horse-hoof parings, horn-shavings, 

 fish refuse, and other refuse, are used in alternation with farm- 

 yard-manure ; nitrate of soda and guano are also freely put on. 

 Rape-dust might be used also with great advantage for many 

 gross-feeding vegetables, as it is found to be one of the best 

 manures for hops in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Surrey. 



Upon most farms there are some spots, some fields, that are 



