MARKET GARDENING 337 



shire gets its early potatoes first from Penzance, then 

 from St. Malo and Ayrshire. North Wales possesses 

 far superior transit facilities and a climate that is 

 intermediate between Cornwall and Ayrshire. Even 

 Cheshire and West Lancashire grow early potatoes, 

 and broccoli and cabbage succeed the potatoes. But 

 we were informed that the Welsh farmer would scorn 

 to grow a cabbage lest he should derogate from his 

 social status as a farmer. 



Some efforts are being made to introduce more 

 intensive crops ; at one or two places we saw trial 

 patches of tobacco, which, however, were looking a 

 little backward because of the rainy and sunless 

 weather that had prevailed almost continuously since 

 the May drought, itself a hindrance to planting. 

 Again, in Anglesey we saw a new enterprise in the 

 shape of a bulb farm chiefly devoted to daffodils, on 

 which the bulbs were then being lifted and put away 

 in potato boxes to dry in a long airy shed. In a 

 few weeks they would be cleaned up, the marketable 

 bulbs packed off, and the small offsets replanted to 

 provide the stock for another year. The whole farm 

 is about 25 acres in extent, but only five acres have 

 been as yet planted with bulbs ; it is not intended 

 ever to crop all the area with bulbs, but to take 

 potatoes and run beans over a fourth of the land 

 every year, thus avoiding some of the dangers which 

 have overtaken the bulb land in Holland, which gets 

 little or no rest. The soil was a reddish stony loam, 

 easy to work but fairly retentive, and it was found 

 to produce somewhat smaller but denser bulbs than 

 come from Holland, where the soil is almost pure 

 seasand modified by cow dung. The whole production 

 of the farm was taken by a well-known firm of bulb 

 sellers who have a reputation for the quality of their 



