Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming. 
It 
peas, Lisbon onions, broad and French beans, potatoes, wheat, 
oats, were remarkably good. Crops of vegetables taken in rota- 
tion with corn and other crops do not require more manure than 
mangolds, or swedes, or beans. Neither does it follow that farm- 
yard-manure is indispensable. Upon the market-garden farms 
in Essex large quantities of horse-hoof parings, horn-shavings, 
fish refuse, and other refuse, are used in alternation with farm- 
yard-manure ; nitrate of soda and guano are also freely put on. 
Rape-dust might be used also with great advantage for many 
gross-feeding vegetables, as it is found to be one of the best 
manures for hops in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Surrey. 
Upon most farms there are some spots, some fields, that are 
suited for vegetables, if well and properly cultivated. It is a 
mistake to suppose that land for this purpose must naturally be 
of exceptional quality. Much of the land in Essex and other 
market-garden districts, is by no means fertile by nature ; nor 
is the sandy soil round Biggleswade in Bedfordshire especially 
rich. Land that will grow turnips and mangolds well will grow 
cabbages and other plants of the Brassica order. For onions, 
French beans, carrots, parsnips, and lettuces, fairly good soil is 
necessary, and soil that works well and does not bind. Peas 
for podding and broad beans flourish in those soils where 
field -peas and beans thrive. The loams and clayey loams of 
the Lower Greensand, of the Upper Greensand, of the Lower 
London Tertiaries, answer well for vegetables. Also the lighter 
marls of the Chalk, and the more friable clays of the Old and 
New Red Sandstone, and the Lias, and the peaty lands in parts 
of Lancashire and other counties, also much of the alluvial and 
drift soil, would answer admirably for their growth. It would 
perhaps not be too much to say that upon all soils where pota- 
toes are successfully grown, the more common kinds of vegetables 
would do well. Except in the extreme north of England, the 
general climatic conditions of most of the counties would be 
propitious, if judgment were exercised in the selection of favour- 
able situations, sheltered from prevalent winds in the bleaker 
districts. On almost all farms there are slopes and bottoms 
where protection of this kind is afforded, and fields near the 
farmhouse comparatively sheltered, where the best of the land is 
generally to be found, upon which vegetables would flourish. 
Vegetable Growing. 
In giving a list of the crops suitable for market-garden farming, 
and a short account of the modes of cultivating them, it will be 
well to commence with CABBAGES, as they are easily cultivated, 
and are the crop upon which farmers usually try their 'prentice 
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