INTENSIVE CULTIVATION 425 



October. The stalks are rather a trouble to deal with ; 

 they have to be cut off, then forked up, and laid after- 

 wards in the furrow behind the plough. A certain 

 acreage of savoys and other cabbage is seen, but 

 Brussels sprouts hold an enormous pre-eminence. As 

 a rule they are followed by oats, barley being rarely 

 grown in the district ; latterly the French spring 

 wheats have proved a very useful introduction, as they 

 can be sown after the green crop and the produce is 

 more valuable than oats. Thin as the soil is, and it must 

 be manured for every crop, eating up even farmyard 

 manure in a single season, two corn crops are often 

 taken in succession, the only rest the land gets being a 

 clover ley once every five or six years. Turnips are 

 not much grown, there are few live stock in the district, 

 and the roots are also subject to finger-and-toe. The 

 land lacks lime, as could be seen by the abundance of 

 corn marigold, sheep's sorrel, and spurrey among the 

 weeds. Many of the stubbles also were white with 

 stinking mayweed, a weed which was exceptionally 

 prevalent in 1912 on all classes of land. 



Though Brussels sprouts form the staple crop of the 

 district, many other vegetables are grown ; nowhere 

 else have we seen so much parsley, of which there was 

 a breadth, large or small, on nearly every holding, 

 planted between onions, which are pulled before the 

 parsley spreads much. Marrows and kidney beans 

 are extensively grown and had just been cut off 

 by the first October frost ; we saw wagon-loads 

 of marrows being drawn away to the dung-heap or 

 to the pigs, for the numbers that had to be cleared 

 made them no longer worth selling. Breadths of 

 parsnips and carrots were common, and we saw one 

 small plot of land which had grown carrots for seed 

 for many years. Our host was just stacking a crop 



