Market' Gardening and Market- Gardeners. 165 



of salads, fruits, and vegetables. I from there went to an ex- 

 tensive general grower of out-door fruits ; having twenty-six 

 acres of cropping ground under the spade, with more than 600 

 lights of framing for the early forcing of various things, and 

 about 1200 hand and bell glasses ; so that, in those twelve 

 years, I had the opportunity of seeing the different methods of 

 sowing and growing, from the commonest vegetable and salad 

 to the most rare and expensive fruits. Market-gardeners, 

 generally speaking, are the most industrious persevering class 

 of men I ever met with ; but they are at an enormous expense, 

 and subject to very heavy losses. Nobody has an idea to what 

 expense they go ; and their men (taking the year through) I 

 consider to work harder, and to have more hardships to contend 

 with, than any other class of men I have ever met with. Two 

 thirds, or more, of the men are Irish ; at least they were so at 

 the time I followed that kind of business ; and I never met with 

 more than one Scotchman amongst them as a workman. I have 

 kept an account of the expense of working one acre of ground 

 under the spade, reckoning the rent, taxes, manure, horses, &c., 

 and getting the produce to market, and I found it averaged 

 50Z. per acre. 



I have heard hundreds of people complain of being tired with 

 working ; but they never knew what it was to follow market- 

 gardening for one year in the neighbourhood of London. If 

 they had done so, they would soon have found out what it was to 

 be tired. I have worked, and been paid, at the rate of ten 

 days a week ; and generally made, at some work or other, eight 

 days all the season, for some years, out of my time. I could 

 sleep as well riding on the top of a load all through London to 

 Covent Garden as I now can on a bed, and have done so many 

 times ; and sometimes then what little sleep I did get was on 

 the pavement in the old market, amongst vegetables, and before 

 the business of tlie market began, and I never thought it any 

 hardship. 



The method the market-gardeners have of cropping and 

 changing their crops is astonishing to many. For instance, you 

 will see a large space of ground cropped, and arrived at the 

 greatest state of perfection one day, and in about three days 

 afterwards you will see it all gone; the ground manured, 

 trenched, and cropped, almost in the space of time a West- 

 Country man would turn round to reply to a question. 



Some of them pay their Avorkmen ready money every night ; 

 others three times a week ; others twice a week, and some 

 every Saturday evening. The reason why we find so few of 

 these workmen afterwards as gentlemen's gardeners (in my 

 opinion) is, first, that, if a man is a scholar, he thinks he can 

 make better use of his time than following market-gardening ; 



