850 
Report upon the Market-garden, and 
price of produce falls in a most sudden and disastrous mannery 
owing to a glut of particular vegetables, as in the early spring of 
1878, when coleworts and cabbages, in consequence of the mild 
winter, Avere literally not worth carriage to London, and these 
crops were ploughed in on very many acres ; while at the same 
date in the next year they were at famine prices. Occasionally 
a market-gardener, being a lucky individual, or blessed with a 
prophetic soul, makes a grand coup by having furnished his 
garden with a good supply of a commodity which few others 
have. " It is a good plan generally," said one fortunate com- 
petitor, " to plant that vegetable extensively of which there has 
happened to be a large quantity in the previous year. Nine 
men out of ten would be afraid to venture largely again for a 
time." This gentleman practised what he preached, and went 
in heavily for coleworts and cabbages in 1879, regardless of the 
losses upon them in 1878, and was reaping a rich reward for 
his sagacity. 
Mr. Patch had some good coleworts and early York cabbages, 
which were making close to 90Z. per acre, though they were 
neither so well grown nor so regular as others that were seen. 
At the first inspection of this garden the crops taken all rouml 
looked well, particularly some Forty fold peas, got in early 
after scarlet-runners. The seed was dropped by hand into rows 
hoed out, which were filled with horse-hoof parings at the rate 
of one ton per acre. Both the autumn sown onions for bunching 
or drawing for sale in bunches in the spring, and those that had 
been sown in the spring for " bulbing " or for marketing as 
small or large bulbs in the summer or autumn, according to the 
demand, were fairly good, and the potatoes looked well. At the 
subsequent inspection the Judges were somewhat disappointed 
at the comparatively poor progress that some of the crops had 
made, due no doubt in a degree to the bad weather, as well as 
to some little neglect in getting the weeds checked. To kill 
these was perhaps almost out of the question, and to check them 
was a task worthy of Sisyphus, but others had tackled them a 
little more pluckily than Mr. Patch. Some of the potatoes 
were patchy, and the onions and carrots had lost plant. Slugs 
were suggested as the cause of the weakness of the carrOts, but 
this soft impeachment was indignantly denied by Mr. Patch, 
wlio prides himself upon never having such beasts upon his land. 
The Judges imagined that they should then and there discover a 
great slug-preventing secret, but looking furtively into the hearts 
of the cabbages, where slugs love to lie, they saw enough to con- 
vince them that Mr. Patch is slug-blind. 
Like other market-gardeners Mr. Patch has no systematic 
rotations of crops. His most usual method is to take winter 
