THE MANURING OF MARKET-GARDEN CROPS. 



997 



spending a portion of the money thus saved on concentrated fertilisers, 

 keeping the balance in their pockets. This conviction did not involve, 

 we think, any blindness to the particular virtues of dung. Dung con- 

 stantly adds to the store of humus or organic matter in the soil, and thus 

 gives it a mechanical condition which corrects the inherent physical 

 shortcomings peculiar in the one extreme to sandy soils and in the other 

 to heavy clays. Probably the most intrinsically valuable property that 

 dung possesses is its power of regulating the absorption and evaporation 

 of water, and for this property alone it is so useful, on almost any soil, 

 that the market gardener, even more than the farmer, cannot afford to 

 neglect it. Formerly it had an altogether other and unique value ; it 

 was the only source of plant food that could be added to those of the 

 unaided soil and air. But this has long ceased to be the case, and, 

 regarded only as a source of readily available nitrogen, phosphates, and 

 potash — merely as plant food — we had long suspected that purchased 

 dung was an unduly expensive manure. On soils in fairly good mechani- 

 cal condition, if one could but predict a rainfall normal in quantity and 

 distribution, we could probably, for many vegetable crops, economically 

 dispense altogether with dung ; but as we have to insure ourselves 

 against uncertainties of season, we cannot afford altogether to forego the 

 assistance of dung, even at the risk of some extravagance. The market 

 gardener, however, who is not too wedded to custom to make trial of new 

 methods and to profit by new experience, will probably eventually learn 

 to limit his outlay in purchased dung and to increase his expenditure in 

 concentrated manures. 



An opportunity occurred ten years ago of putting our views to the 

 test of practice. One of us was consulted by Mr. Hillman, the Secretary 

 of the Permanent Nitrate Committee, as to the drawing up of some 

 practical instructions for the use of nitrate of soda for vegetable growing, 

 a subject on which inquiries were occasionally being made by market 

 gardeners and other gardeners who happened to have heard something 

 of the general virtues of this particular fertiliser. Very little definite or 

 reliable information, however, appeared to exist as to the best mode of 

 using either this or any other artificial fertiliser for vegetable or market 

 garden crops. Endless experiments had been made with all sorts of 

 manures on the ordinary farm, but scarcely any had been recorded either 

 in the market garden or in the kitchen garden, and all the detailed advice 

 that could be given was necessarily cautious, meagre, and based largely 

 on analogy. To meet the difficulty, the Committee, having a trust fund 

 at its disposal for encouraging experimental work, liberally offered to 

 defray the expense of a series of practical field experiments on the 

 subject. The opportunity thus offered was gladly welcomed, and it was 

 resolved to establish a market garden experiment station which should 

 deal on an ample scale with a large variety of crops, if only a colleague 

 able as well as willing could be found in occupation of a farm suitable for 

 the purpose. The result was the co-operation of the authors of this 

 report and the establishment of the now Avell-known Hadlow Experiment 

 Station on the farm occupied by one of us near the village of Golden 

 Green, in the parish of Hadlow, a few miles from the town of Tonbridge. 

 This station is now in the tenth year of its age, and we hope, with the 



