344 CORNISH MARKET GARDENING 



for several other varieties are now grown and also saved 

 for seed ; bees will effect cross pollination from con- 

 siderable distances, and deterioration inevitably follows 

 indiscriminate crossing. One of the growers also 

 averred that sufficient discrimination was not exercised 

 in the selection of the plants allowed to seed ; the 

 occupants of some convenient corner were left without 

 considering whether they were specially early or late, 

 of good habit, or otherwise. One or two seedsmen's 

 varieties are now extensively grown for succession, 

 but none of them come so early as the true native 

 stock. 



On some of the land nothing but potatoes and 

 broccoli are ever grown, but most of the market 

 gardeners make an occasional change ; a small area 

 will be sown with wheat or rye, because the straw 

 is wanted for packing, and in the corn clover will 

 be sown and allowed to stand for a single crop of 

 hay. Spring cabbage or savoys sometimes take the 

 place of the broccoli, and they had been a very 

 profitable crop in the spring of 1912. Onions and 

 carrots were other crops that paid well on occasion, 

 and a little farther afield several men were engaged 

 in a more general market gardening business with 

 a considerable variety of crops, one advantage of 

 which is an equalization of the work throughout the 

 season, so that labourers can be permanently employed 

 instead of taken on for the job. One such holding 

 that we visited, in addition to the usual potatoes 

 and broccoli, produced cabbages, onions, and carrots, 

 also strawberries on a large scale, though Penzance 

 has no longer the monopoly of the early outdoor trade 

 in strawberries, Southampton being practically as early. 

 Some of the land was under fruit apples and goose- 

 berries, though in the Cornish climate fungoid diseases 



