Miscellaneous. 



166 



[August, 1908. 



"Mr. McKay, who now makes good the 

 deficiency, may be regarded as the 

 founder of the French garden in England, 

 since he first persuaded English gar- 

 deners to go over to Paris to see for 

 themselves the wonders of cultivation 

 which they would not believe on hear- 

 say. His diary and manual of French 

 gardening is published to-day, and we 

 trust that in continuation of the ac- 

 counts of French gardening given and 

 about to be given in the Daily Mail, it 

 will promote, in a practical and health- 

 ful manner, this important industry. 



How Profits are Multiplied. 



"The prosperity of the English 

 countryside depends first and foremost 

 on close or intensive cultivation. The 

 growth of machinery has greatly bene- 

 fited the large farmer, and, indeed, the 

 small farmer, but for the moment it 

 made a reduction in the amount of 

 labour employed on the land. That was 

 the first stage of the new agriculture. 

 The second came when science began to 

 teach us that personal attention to small 

 plots may do even more than mechanical 

 attention to ample spaces. With the 

 help of a cutter and binder a farmer can 

 gather his crops cheaply and neatly. He 

 can make, we will say, an average profit 

 of £2 an acre where previously he would 

 make 30s. an acre. But that advance is 

 as nothing to the next. It is now 

 proved that a man equipped with scienti- 

 fic and practical knowledge of the in- 

 finite capacity of the soil may with the 

 help of capital now make profit to the 

 extent of £100 or £150 an acre, where in 

 earlier days it was supposed impossible 

 to make £30 or £40. 



Profits on four and a Half acres. 



"Mr. McKay quotes in this book the 

 exact figures from the farm of four and a 

 half acres set up at Evesham. From one 

 acre gross returns of over £600 were 

 procured. A few of the details of the 

 sale may be given. ' From 600 lights Mr. 

 Harvey cut 21,600 lettuces, at an average 

 of 2s. per dozen. Out of the same lights 

 2,400 cauliflowers, at an average of 4s. 

 per dozen; again from the same lights 

 2,400 dozen turnips and 5,000 dozen 

 bunches of carrots at 6d. per dozen, as 

 well as three melons from each light 

 occupied with them at 2s. 6d. each.' 



"Entirely apart from the question 

 how much it may cost to get that result, 

 the fact itself is a revelation of the 

 power of the soil to produce wealth. It 

 means that a man who will work hard, 

 and who has the knowledge, can easily 

 live on an acre, and can, at the same 

 time, pay high rent for the land and for 

 the equipment. The man who goes in 



for French gardening on the highest 

 scale will need capital and will risk it, 

 but the system can be employed by any 

 man, however poor. It is full of hints 

 and suggestions, and applies to the 

 greenhouse a3 to the frame. You can 

 begin wih a single frame, and test French 

 gardening on a capital of £2. The sup- 

 reme secret is that a piece of land may 

 bear four or even five crops in the year 

 with very much less cost both of manure 

 and of glass than is involved either in the 

 greenhouse artificially heated or in the 

 ordinary hot frame of the English 

 garden. 



Those who are Experimenting. 



" From one point of view French 

 gardening may be regarded as very 

 costly. It involves fencing, protecting, 

 levelling, and covering with glass a larg 

 part of the garden ground, but any othe 

 system of glass is very much more ex 

 expensive and brings smaller returns 



The people who are now beginning t 

 start French gardens are the righ 

 people to start. One class consists o 

 professional market gardeners, one o 

 amateurs who have little difficulty i 

 finding the capital, but who need con 

 siderable return if their capital is to sup 

 port them ; the third consists chiefly o 

 educational horticulturists, and fro 

 all these it is to be hoped that the inten 

 sive science of the French will sprea 

 throughout the English people, and will 

 help them to see that the land, from 

 which we all live, ought to be treated 

 with such scientific care as we apply to 

 any other industry. For example, the 

 best brewers employ the most distin- 

 guished botanists they can find and 

 send them to study both nature and art 

 in many countries. The farmer and 

 the market gardener should, like the 

 brewer, regard the treatment of the land 

 as essentially a scientific business, and 

 the study of the science of the soil will 

 give as good returns to intelligent work 

 as the ferment of the barley grain. 



The French system may be regarded 

 as the natural development of the mar- 

 ket garden. A man can make £60 an 

 acre off an open garden. An hotel 

 waiter has done this on an indifferent 

 s ite in his spare hours. 



Food Reform. 

 "The establishment of the French 

 garden coincides with a growing desire 

 for food reform. The French have 

 learnt to def y the seasons for a hundred 

 years or more. So far, we have been 

 content to experiment with a few hot- 

 house fruits, principally grapes and 

 peaches. At much less cost we can pro- 

 vide for the general use an all-the-year- 



