2 STRAW BERRIES 
with the high quality of the fruit— Royal Sovereigns 
especially—sold at stalls or from costers’ barrows at 4d. 
and often 3d. per lb. ‘These prices cannot leave a very 
large margin of profit to the grower, but it must be 
remembered that they only obtain in good seasons, and 
are paid only for second quality fruits, surplus stock, or 
some belated consignment that has missed the early and 
most profitable market customers. 
While in so many other fruit industries foreign com- 
petition has to be considered, the strawberry grower 
has not to face it; for though France sends a few tons 
of early strawberries each season, these come at the tail 
end of the forced crops, and just before the earliest from 
out of doors; and, moreover, the quality is not good, 
proving that such soft fruits lose flavour during even a 
brief sea voyage. The market season of forced straw- 
berries is during April and May, and the districts from 
whence these early fruits come are Worthing, Belvedere, 
Bromley, Swanley, Bexley Heath, Twickenham and 
Hampton. A moderate amount of fire heat is used for 
the earlier crops, but the later ones are produced in 
houses that are only heated when the weather is severe. 
Crops vary in quantity with the skill and conveniences 
of the grower. “They may average as high as 4 ozs. per 
plant or as low as 14 ozs., and while it is questionable 
whether the latter gives any profit at all, it is quite safe 
to say that 24 ozs. and upwards per plant pays very well. 
Some growers force as many as 50,000 plants each season. 
The agricultural returns do not specify the area under 
strawberries alone in the United Kingdom, but it is quite 
evident that the large increase in small fruit culture is 
due not a little to the growing strawberry industry. 
While naturally there are many hundreds of acres de- 
voted to the supply of local demands, scattered up and 
down the land from Penzance to Aberdeen, yet, as in so 
many other industries, the growers for the big markets 
