482 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



GARDEN EXPERIMENTS. 



By F. J. Baker, A.R.C.Sc. 

 Lecture given November 26, 1907. 



Every gardener is continually having to consider, not only what he shall 

 grow, but what cultural methods he shall adopt. Two persons in charge 

 of adjacent gardens may work very differently, although the same object 

 is sought. Frequently investigations show that practices which have 

 become time-honoured are wrong. Writers and speakers too often 

 obtain their ideas almost exclusively from books, and errors are per- 

 petuated again and again. How is the earnest gardener to ascertain 

 the real facts ? Only by careful experiment. 



I desire to show the need for each gardener to be his, or her, 

 own experimenter ; to endeavour to indicate somewhat of the intense 

 interest, as well as the utility, accruing ; and to describe methods which 

 I have adopted for several years, and a few of the results obtained with 

 soils, manures, vegetables, hardy fruit, and flowers. 



Many of us are well-nigh daily receiving circulars, pictorial post-cards, 

 and the like, intended to show the wonderful results obtainable by using 

 this or that substance. One sometimes wonders why the writers do not 

 make their fortunes in the way they advise others to do. Alas ! these 

 flattering reports are usually selected for purposes of advertisement. 

 A concrete example will illustrate the point. Some years ago a well- 

 known company requested me to undertake sundry manurial experiments. 

 I obtained the necessary substances, and the experiments were made. In 

 due course I was asked that plots which showed the utility of the sub- 

 stance might be selected and photographs taken for publication. It was 

 easy to select isolated plots which apparently showed good results, 

 especially if one conveniently forgot, for the time, any previous manurial 

 treatment, although the experiments as a whole showed that the stuff 

 did not nearly pay expenses. I refused to be a party to such selection, 

 and in consequence, of course, got nothing for the substances used, my 

 time, or anything else. The following and succeeding years a neighbour, 

 quite a novice at practical gardening, did the required experiments, and 

 long reports were published in the general and local press to show the 

 wonderful profits which were obtained. Several of these results are still 

 being republished. If the results had been generally true of the holding, 

 the occupier should have been making a large income. The poor crops 

 he generally obtained were, however, strongly commented upon in the 

 district, and throughout the whole time the man was getting badly into 

 debt, and while the reports were passing through the press the whole of 

 his stock was seized and sold. 



The experiments being made by county councils and other public 

 authorities are doubtless more reliable, but many of them are by no 



