346 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
SOME HINTS ON THE MANURING OF GARDEN CROPS. 
By H. E. P. Hodsoll, F.C.S., M.S.E.A.C. 
[Read August 28, 1917 ; Mr. E. H. Jenkins in the Chair.] 
Owing to the submarine menace the question of food production in 
this country has become one of which an entirely different view must 
now be taken. In the past, farming and the growth of food-stuffs 
generally have been left entirely to private enterprise and have re- 
ceived little, if indeed any, national attention. Successive Govern- 
ments have consistently and persistently ignored the fact that the 
industry of producing food — and consequently wealth — from the soil, 
must of necessity be of the first national importance. 
It has taken the grim spectre of starvation to wake us up to this 
fact, and in view not only of the national shortage of food-stuffs, but 
of the world shortage, which is likely to continue for some years, we 
are now faced with the urgent necessity of producing the maximum 
crops from our farms and gardens. 
Every owner or occupier of a garden or an allotment is, or ought 
by this time to be, aware of this fact ; he knows that the prices of 
all foods have risen enormously since those far-off days before the war, 
and he shrewdly suspects that it will be a long time before supplies 
and prices return to their pre-war level, if indeed they ever do so. 
The point therefore that we have to consider is — Can this increased 
production be brought about, and if so by what means ? Every 
student of horticulture knows that it can. We have only to visit a 
highly cultivated garden, or one of the district swhere the best intensive 
cultivation is practised, to be astounded at the amount of food and 
wealth that an acre of old England can produce. What, then, is 
the secret ? Wherein lies the difference between these fertile areas 
and so much of the country which we see yielding poor crops of 
inferior quality ? 
The reply frequently given, that it is all a question of soil, is not 
true. Admittedly the man who has a good natural soil starts with an 
advantage ; but most of the soil in this country is capable of pro- 
ducing good and profitable crops if only it were properly drained, 
cultivated, and manured. 
• These are the three essentials. This lecture is not now concerned 
with the first two, important though they are, but confines itself to 
the last, the question of manuring — that is to say, the artificial feed- 
ing of the crop, the supplementing of the plant foods that are already 
in the soil. 
