844 
Report upon the Marhet-garden, and 
Mr. Lancaster has with much ingenuity adopted irrigation 
upon his market-garden most successfully in dry summers, 
having fixed a steam-engine to pump up the water, and laid 
pipes and cut channels to spread it over the land, A wide sewer 
or watercourse whose water runs into the Thames intersects this 
land, and small ditches connected with this watercourse divide 
it at intervals. These formerly served as fences to part the 
fields when it was pasture land and grazed by cattle. In wet 
seasons like the last it happens that the water in these ditches 
overflows, and in this event the steam-engine is used to pump 
it out, Mr. Lancaster said that he is the only market-gardener, 
except those who have sewage-farms proper, who systematically 
irrigates his land in dry seasons. " My neighbours," he added, 
" laughed at first when I began to irrigate, but the first season 
I did so turned out to be a very dry one, so that I had good crops 
when others were bad, and therefore made high prices, which 
stopped their laughter." When the Judges went over this 
market-garden the engine was pumping the surplus water away 
from the land. Only about twelve years ago the whole of this 
garden was grass land, and has been gradually broken up by 
Mr. Lancaster. He has built a comfortable dwelling-house, 
with stables, sheds, green-houses, forcing-pits, and an engine- 
house, and has changed the land from average grazing land to 
highly productive, profitable market-garden ground, fitted with 
all appliances for its management. 
As the soil is heavy and lies wet in the winter and is unsuitable 
for growing winter greenstuff, so much so that Mr. Lancaster 
cannot grow his own cabbage plants, it is found much better 
to let much of the land lie dormant during the winter, and to 
work it as hard as possible in the spring and summer when it has 
been dried by March winds. Therefore the system of cropping 
differs from that of ordinary market-gardens, inasmuch as 
radishes, lettuces, marrows, cucumbers, spring onions, cauli- 
flowers, and celery are principally grown. Celery is Mr. 
Lancaster's speciality, which he grows singularly well, and for 
which his soil is peculiarly suited. He has a reputation for 
celery in Covent Garden, and almost invariably makes the top 
prices in the market. He either sows the celery seed first in 
frames with a certain amount of heat, from whence the plants 
are put out into the rows ; or the seed is sown in hot-houses 
having a high temperature, and the plants are pricked out 
into small frames close to the ground, with a gentle heat under 
them, and taken from thence for planting out. This plan 
answers well in cold, changeable seasons, as the plants arc 
gradually accustomed to changes of temperature; but it entails 
