50 SPECIALIST FARMING: HOPS AND FRUIT 



now vanished industry; for until we had crossed the 

 South-Eastern line to Hastings we met with no hop 

 plantations, and then with many fewer than the kilns. 

 The acreage under hops has been shrinking con- 

 siderably for the last generation, and has, moreover, 

 been concentrating itself into certain favoured districts, 

 like the valley of the Medway and its tributaries or 

 the belt of rich loams in East Kent, in which places 

 the production of hops has been pursued intensively 

 until a much greater yield per acre has been forced. 

 In many of the little Sussex gardens that survive the 

 hops are grown with very slight departures from the 

 method prevailing in Tudor times, as described by 

 Reynolde Scot in that rarest of all agricultural books, 

 The Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden. 



Very different was the management on one of the 

 modern farms we visited, where we saw probably the 

 most intensive cultivation that is practised in any part 

 of the world. Rather more than a hundred acres were 

 under hops, lying partly on flat alluvial fields along 

 the sides of a small stream and partly on the deep 

 loams on the lower slopes of the valley, and the annual 

 expenditure averaged not less than 50 per acre 

 before the hops were sent to market. The hops are 

 trained up lengths of coir yarn, which are attached 

 every year to a network of strong wire stretched over 

 the whole plantation at a height of thirteen or fourteen 

 feet. The permanent superstructure of poles and wire 

 represents a capital outlay of about 30 an acre, and 

 the annual renewal of the string costs about 3 an 

 acre for labour and material ; but this system has 

 almost entirely replaced the old poles, as it is found 

 to grow both more and healthier hops. The routine 

 of cultivation is heavy and continuous ; the hop plants 

 have to be pruned in the early spring, shoots of the 



