394 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
deposit several feet in depth. The plant grows luxuri- 
antly in such soil, but apparently will not grow in 
marshy soil, nor where there is present more than 10 to 
20 per cent of clay or 30 per cent of sand.” 
It certainly seems to dislike more than a com- 
paratively small percentage of sand. The sandy soils 
are more apt to pack after a heavy rain, and to become 
too dense for the rhizomes of the plant. Wet swampy 
ground does not suit it at all, and ground apt to be 
hooded is to be avoided. 
In cases in which the ground becomes too dry in the 
dry season, a system of irrigation will be needed, and 
swampy ground may be utilised by systematic and 
careful drainage. But the ideal ground for ginger is 
good garden soil, rich in humus, light and well worked, 
friable and fairly dry. A very large proportion of the 
ginger produced in Jamaica is cultivated by the natives 
as a garden-plant in small plots, in much the same way 
as potatoes are grown in England. 
The class of soil in which it is grown seems to have 
a considerable importance, not only in the amount of 
the crop, but in the size of the hands or rhizomes, and 
in their texture. Thus it is remarked that in rich cool 
soil, recently cleared of wood, “ it grows so luxuriantly 
that a large spreading root will weigh near a pound. It 
is, however, remarked that what is produced from a 
clayey, tenacious soil shrinks less in scalding, while 
such as is raised in richer, free black moulds loses 
considerably in that operation.” ^ 
In Jamaica for many years the extravagant and 
ruinous policy of destruction of virgin forest by felling 
and burning, followed by cultivation of ginger for a few 
years and then abandoning the land, now spoilt and 
worn out, and destroying more forest, was pursued, as 
has been done in the Straits Settlements and others of 
our colonies. The soil of the virgin forest is rich enough 
for the growth of ginger, and will last for a few years, 
when, with the washing out of the nutritive elements 
^ Long’s “Jamaica,” quoted in Kew Bulletin, 1892, p. 79. 
