THE MANURING- OF MARKET-GARDEN CROPS. 



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THE MANURING OF MARKET-GARDEN CROPS. 

 By Bernard Dyer, D.Sc, F.I.C., and F. W. E. Shrivell, F.L.S. 



Introductory. 



Our experiments on the manuring of vegetable and fruit crops have now 

 entered on their tenth year. The following pages contain the records of 

 the first eight years, and, to a partial extent, those of the ninth year, 

 together with the practical conclusions which they thus far appear to us 

 to indicate. 



In order that the reader who has not followed the earlier accounts of 

 onr work may be enabled more easily to understand its scope and bearing 

 it is necessary to make some general prefatory observations. 



Our work very largely resolves itself into an inquiry as to whether or 

 not the large quantities of purchased dung now used by market gardeners 

 are being used to the greatest economical advantage. It may be taken 

 as common knowledge that market-garden crops are more heavily 

 manured than any other crops except hops, and that nowhere is the 

 worship of dung more devoutly practised than in the market-garden. For 

 this there are two chief reasons. The first lies in the tradition of the 

 ages during which dung was the only available manure, and during 

 which the home patch of vegetables preceded the modern market garden. 

 This home patch, being near the stable and the cowhouse, and also near 

 the domestic rubbish heap, could be manured lavishly with the maximum 

 of ease, and afforded an always near and striking object-lesson in the 

 value of the then only manure to be had. And so the ideas of vegetable 

 growing and of heavy dunging became correlatively fixed, even when 

 market gardening had grown into an important branch of broad-acre 

 farming. 



The other reason is that, since the market garden exists to supply 

 large towns or cities, it is necessarily situated within fairly easy reach of 

 them, and therefore within fairly easy reach also of the vast quantities of 

 stable dung produced therein. If the journey to town is a road journey, 

 as it very commonly is, the carts that take the produce into market bring 

 back dung ; and in this case the cost of carriage of the dung is not 

 directly felt, although it is really paid for in wear and tear of the 

 horses and carts. When the journey to town is a railroad one, the com- 

 panies' trucks take the place of the farm carts, and in this case the cost 

 of carriage of the dung is directly felt. 



When we began our experiments, the use of supplementary fertilisers 

 in the market garden had not, of course, been wholly neglected, but the 

 position they occupied in this industry relatively to dung had long been 

 inconspicuous compared with the corresponding position which they 

 occupy in ordinary farming. Moreover, the supplementary fertilisers 



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