432 
Market- Gardening. 
There are many garderf-farmers occupying less tlian 10 acres, 
others occupy from 10 to 50 acres, and a few even more, and 
some are owners as well as occupiers. 
Spade labour is not resorted to, and the small farmers are 
accustomed to hire teams of horses when they require them. 
The crops are kept remarkably clean, and every kind of work is 
well done ; for the employer, instead of sending his men to their 
labour, is in the habit of taking them to it and keeping them at 
it, his occupation being so small. 
Garden-farming is entirely dependent, here as elsewhere, on 
a supply of manure from outside the farm, consequently, at a 
distance of more than two miles from the railway-station, gardening 
merges rapidly into farming ; and it may be added, that when 
farmers have been tempted by the large gross returns to combine 
the cultivation of vegetables with their ordinary business, they 
have not usually been successful. The business of market- 
gardening is one in which both the master and his man should 
have served an apprenticeship. 
The crops grown include a considerable breadth of corn, turnip, 
kohl-rabi, and onion-seeds, and a few carrots and parsnips. 
Scarcely any peas are grown, and none of the " fancy crops," such 
as flowers and -culinary herbs. The main crops are potatoes and 
onions, both for pickling and for " lofting," i.e. storing in airy 
lofts constructed for the purpose, with louvre boards for ventila- 
tion. A large portion of the produce is sent to the manufacturing 
districts. It is common to sell largely to the dealers or agents 
who visit Bedfordshire after the middle of June, for the purpose 
of buying the growing crops of potatoes, which are lifted and 
marketed under their direction, during the following three months, 
before (he Scotch supply has commenced. This intervention of 
middle-men seems to be practically necessary, in order to regulate 
and distribute the daily supply of vegetables at the various distant 
markets. 
The succession of crops is not regular. It is observed that 
turnip-seed is a good, and potatoes a bad preparation for wheat, 
and that onions ought not to be taken from the same ground 
oftener than once in five years. A common rotation is : 1, onions ; 
2, turnip-seed, or potatoes ; 3, wheat ; followed by such crops 
as onion-seed (after potatoes), cucumbers, carrots, or parsnips. 
The mosi important crop is onions, which receive enormous 
dressings of manure, and sometimes yield a handsome return. 
The method of cultivation is the same as at Barking — one 
ploughing, six inches in depth, and the manure harrowed in 
with the seed — 50 tons of dung per acre are sometimes applied, 
costing 8s. per ton at the railway, and IQs. when spread in the 
field. Small dressings of guano are occasionally used, but in 
