Au^rust 7, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
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COMING EVENTS 
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9th Sunday after Trinity. 
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Royal Horticultural Society’s Fruit and Ploral Committees at 11 a.m. 
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Eastbourne Show. [Cottagers’ Show]. 
OVEECROWDING. 
HE overcrowding of plants, trees, and crops is, 
perhaps, the greatest and most common of all the 
mistakes that are made in the routine of garden- 
ing. Examples of half a dozen plants being 
packed in a space where there is only properly 
room for one ; of growths of fruit trees struggling 
with each other for the light and air they cannot 
obtain ; of Vines interlaced so that it is utterly 
impossible for the foliage to develope and per¬ 
form its functions; of Cucumbers and Melons forming a 
bramble-like thicket; of Peas bundled together as if each 
plant should be limited to the smallest possible single stem ; 
of Turnips, Lettuces, and such plants choking each other 
in the seed beds ; of Broccolis and Winter Greens drawn as 
if it were a virtue to make the stems tender for enduring the 
winter—examples of all these are to be seen every year, not 
in a few but in many gardens. In fact, it may safely be 
said that in more than half the gardens in the country the 
only crops that are not overcrowded are Mustard and Cress. 
The evils of overcrowding are manifold. They involve a 
waste of seed and of plants, also undue impoverishment of 
the soil, and in the end a waste of labour, for when a garden 
is suffered to become overgrown with what cannot be used a 
much greater expenditure of time is requisite to render it 
presentable than if a better considered and more intelligent 
system of culture had been pursued. 
Most persons agree that masses of weeds flowering in 
gardens do not betoken good management. They are ob¬ 
jectionable in spoiling the appearance of a garden, but more 
so because they are robbers extracting the virtues from the 
soil that might support useful or enjoyable crops. What 
better are waste crops and superfluous growths than weeds ? 
They are no better, but are equally robbers, more or less 
unsightly, indicating a great want somewhere. There is no 
doubt whatever that it is absolutely impossible to prevent 
the growth of weeds in many gardens, because of the great 
extent of surface and the limited means allowed for keeping 
it in order. Under such circumstances the overcrowding of 
certain crops is, perhaps, in some degree inevitable. But 
admitting this, it must be said that in cases innumerable it 
is preventive. 
“A gardener’s life is a pleasant one ” is the remark of many 
an onlooker. No doubt this is so in several instances, but 
the life of many a man engaged in gardens is a life of labour 
and anxiety, to which an earnest, intelligent, competent, and 
industrious man ought not to be subjected. He must, how¬ 
ever, endure it, and for the same reason that land is wasted 
by growing weeds—namely, overcrowding. 
There is an overcrowding of men as well as of matter, and 
yet the manufacturing of gardeners appears to go on as briskly 
as ever. It is a mistake. It is a mistake for parents to 
press their sons into gardens, a mistake for those gardeners 
who have the power to have fresh batches of young men 
every year or two, then to send them dancing away with a 
mere smattering of knowledge, but wusc, perhaps, in their 
No. 215.—Yol. IX., TniiiD Skries. 
own conceit. The want of the day is fewer men and more 
competent. This would be better for all—the men who 
escape from the “ profession” and those left in it, and also 
for the employers of these. 
The overcrowding of men who have been half-trained in 
gardens is a great and painful fact, and it has led to this 
strange state of things that if a gentleman wants a gardener 
he has no confidence that he will procure one to give satis¬ 
faction. There is no exaggeration here. The system that 
has led to this anomaly is obviously wrong. There are too 
many draftings of youths—the sons of tradesmen—into 
gardens to do work that might be equally well done by 
labourers on estates, while these men would have the chance 
of working contentedly at home instead of being impelled to 
seek fortune and find misery in already overcrowded towns, 
which they find easy to enter but difficult to leave. 
But to overcrowded crops. A great want amongst gar¬ 
deners is a capacity for estimating correctly what is required. 
The result of this is that they raise far more than is needed, 
forgetting that this surplus is waste or useless, and as ex¬ 
hausting as weeds. They make work for themselves and for 
others that might have been avoided. They fritter their 
resources over too wide a field, and attempt what they 
cannot possibly carry out well. Things are started that 
cannot be finished, and there is driving and confusion and 
overcrowding all round. 
Another want is a lack of promptitude. A man who is 
not well grounded in his calling is naturally hesitating in his 
action. He appears to be unable to make up his mind to 
strike when the time has come for fear he may be wrong. 
He cogitates, wavers, procrastinates hour after hour and day 
after day until the moment passes when he can act effec¬ 
tively. That is one of the most fruitful of all sources of 
overcrowding in gardens, which has often such unfortunate, 
not to say disastrous, results. There is a time for doing work 
the most quickly, easily, and in the best manner. Let that 
time pass, and obstacles accumulate with increasing force 
every day. This applies to work of all kinds—mowing, 
weeding, hoeing, planting, thinning, pruning, watering, 
potting—everything. Every gardener of a quarter of a cen¬ 
tury’s experience knows the truth of this. Mow the lawn 
to-day, and it will not take half the doing that it will a week 
hence, and the more quickly it is done the better will be its 
appearance. See that tinge of green on land and walks— 
myriads of weeds just showing themselves. They are small 
yet. Let them alone to-day, to-morrow, and so on till the 
rain comes and continues. What then ? This : it will take 
a week to remove the weeds that at first might have been 
destroyed in an hour. 
Look at those upspringing crops of Carrots and Turnips and 
Beet; they are ten times too thick—a mistake in sowing— 
but will stand another day, and another, but next they are 
spoiling. No time spent in thinning now can make the crops 
so good as if the right moment had been seized, while at 
least thrice the time must be spent in the work that would 
have sufficed then. And what are all these plants doing, 
Broccoli, and the like, tall and crowded in the seed beds ? 
No land ready ? Then the seed was sown too soon—a fault 
in calculation. But too often the land is ready and the 
opportunity for planting allowed to slip by when weeks of 
dry weather follow, and what might by prompt action and 
an hour or two’s brisk work have been done well can scarcely 
be done at all. It is so with everything. Peas, if left to 
fall over in the rows before staking, never succeed well, while 
much time is spent in putting them straight that would not 
have been wasted had the work of staking been done 
promptly at the right time. Then there is waste of material 
in the vegetable quarters, and further waste of time in 
putting them right. Why are those headless Cauliflowers 
and running Lettuces left to luxuriate ? Could not the 
plants of the former have been pulled up or used instead of 
being beheaded'? and could not the superfluous rows of the 
No. 1871.—VoL. LXXI., Old Series. 
