CHAPTER XV. 



INTENSIVE CULTURE ON ALLOTMENTS AND 

 COTTAGE GARDENS. 



Forcing on Hot-beds Unnecessary Great Increase in Quantity of 

 Produce Essential Features of the System How to Secure Them 

 at Small Expense Suggestions for Practical Work with Schemes 

 and Diagrams of Intercropping Prince Kropotkin on Mutual Help. 



WORKING men who have small gardens might, with 

 great advantage, imitate many of the methods of the 

 French gardener. It would be absurd to recommend that the 

 system should be carried out to its full extent by those who 

 seldom can afford to spend much upon their gardens beyond 

 their labour, because of the outlay necessary, but there are 

 many important features in it which can be adopted without 

 incurring any more expense than is required in ordinary 

 gardening. The popular idea that French gardening consists 

 of huge hot-beds covered with frames and bell-glasses is only 

 partly true. These things are important accessories, but are 

 not the system itself ; they are indispensable for some of the 

 earliest crops, but practical experience goes to show that such 

 crops, although they sell for high prices, are very little, if any, 

 more profitable than those produced a little later at much less 

 expense. 



There has been much controversy with respect to the profits 

 which may be derived from French gardening, and it is certain 

 that where the cost of labour and manure, together with 

 depreciation and interest on invested capital, are take'n into 

 careful account the profits can never be very large, but what- 

 ever difference of opinion there may be on this point, there can 

 be none as to the great increase in the quantity of produce from 

 each square yard of land cultivated under this system, as com- 

 pared with that obtained by ordinary methods. 



From this point of view alone intensive culture on similar 

 lines to those of the French gardener, but modified to suit the 



