May 9, 1889. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
369 
T HURSDAY last, the 2nd inst., was a day of alternate, very heavy 
showers and gleams of sun, the former preponderating in the 
forenoon, and during the bright intervals steam rose from the earth 
'like a mist. A real “ growing ” day it was called by the busy 
workers in the market gardens which abound in the district. The 
freeholders in this part of the Thames Valley ought almost to feel 
themselves fortunate in these days, when, to use a too familiar 
phrase, land is “ worth nothing.” Those occupants of it, however, 
who pay from £8 to £10, and perhaps more, per acre, are of a some¬ 
what different opinion, naturally thinking it is worth “ something ’’ 
•or ought to be. The truth is the land is worth a great deal, and 
’•has been made what it is by high culture and intelligent cropping, 
with freedom from restrictive covenants on rotation. Freedom 
of cropping has always been the rule in the great market gardens 
or farms within easy distance of the metropolis, with the result 
that more fertility has been put into the land and more produce 
drawn from it—more money spent in labour and management, and 
more made in which owners, occupants, and workers have shared, 
than were possible with methods of cropping drawn up by lawyers 
for the protection of the land, or, in other words, for preventing 
cnltivators getting too much out of it, and leaving it impoverished. 
No doubt greedy or impecunious farmers have left much land in 
far worse condition than they found it; but the significant fact 
remains that this has occurred under the old restrictive covenants 
f;o a far greater extent than where they either did not exist or were 
ignored or broken. 
The great essentials for profitable land culture are capital, 
'knowledge, freedom in cropping and high culture, and where this 
•combination exists, as it does exist in what may be termed garden 
farming in its best form, land increases in value. Free cropping is 
the parent of high culture, as may be seen in gardens all over the 
•country, and hundreds, even thousands of them, are as fertile as 
•ever they were after generations of work. Is it so with farms 
where crop must follow crop in prescribed order, and so much be 
left in fallow—uncropped—for periodical “ rest ? ” Resting land 
to order has amounted, in instances innumerable, to giving weeds a 
•chance to grow, as if these did no harm. That there have been 
•exceptions to weed-infested fallows goes without saying, but during 
recent years especially they have only been about sufficiently 
numerous to prove the rule, and manufacturers might, with almost 
the same reason, give a portion of their machinery a rest from time 
to time for it to get rusty. Let the land alone for some months, 
and in many cases its fertility is not increased but impaired, The 
thrifty occupants of the highest renfed and closest cropped land in 
market gardens laugh at the fallow notion. It is working not' 
Testing that enables them to pay high rents, and if the landlords 
were to be so foolish as to interfere and attempt to impose methods 
■of cropping and fanciful “ rest,” and rotation schemes they would 
very soon have the farms on their own hands, with the inevitable 
•depreciation in value. 
“ But you cannot turn all the farms in the kingdom into market 
gardens,” some readers, who are apt at jumping prematurely to con¬ 
clusions, may soliliquise. Certainly not, such propositions only 
emanate from paper theorists, who can do wonders with the pen 
and the ink pot, but who have done little or nothing on the land ; 
but what can be done is this, and it will have to be done before 
No. 463.—Vol. XVIII., Third Series, 
the lost cultural supremacy of Britain is restored—namely, pur¬ 
suing a system of garden culture with general crops. The capital 
of occupants of land must be commensurate with the extent of 
their holdings ; then, possessing knowledge, they will keep the land 
well fortified, and employ the requisite labour for keeping it clean 
in order that its virtues, or real money value, will not be wasted 
l on weeds, as millions of pounds have been, but concentrated on 
crops for realising a better interest on outlay than can be obtained 
by any other method of procedure. The lower the prices for 
produce the greater the bulk from a given area must of necessity 
be for the aggregate results to bd satisfactory. That principle has 
been recognised and acted on by the most successful market 
gardeners, but not, as a body, by British farmers, for in by far too 
many instances the fall in the value of their products has been 
accompanied with, or followed by, a reduction in bulk of crops. 
Nothing but disaster could be the outcome of such a policy,, 
whether it be the result of a lack of capital, knowledge, or 
enterprise, or the issue of despair. 
It must not be forgotten that foreign competition has lowered 
the value of garden produce as it has that of farms ; and easy¬ 
going gardeners, who could not depart from ancient routine and 
change their methods and expand their operations to meet the 
necessities of the situation, have sustained losses that ended in 
collapse. But, and here is the point worth remembering, during the 
same period others have not only maintained but increased their 
prosperity. And not only so, but “new men” have started in a 
small way, and advanced in greater proportion than the old have 
retrograded or fallen away. This proves to demonstration that 
natural impediments are not so formidable as they seem, and also 
seems to show to an appreciable extent the “ bad times ” argument 
is something of a bogey. “Bad times” without doubt have been 
endured by several persons, but “ good times ” have been enjoyed 
by others. Yet as all this has happened at the “ same time,” the 
differing conditions, allowing for accidents, appear to be the result 
of individual shortcomings on the one hand and individual fore¬ 
thought, thrift, enterprise, and good management on the other. As 
a rule the most successful of market gardeners do not fear foreign 
competition. Some of them grumble at it, and others laugh at it ; 
but they do not waste their time in fighting against facts and 
inexorable fate at “meetings,” but attend strictly to business at 
home. It is true that two of my friends less than ten years ago 
loudly proclaimed that if something was not done to stop the 
“foreign stuff coming” all the home growers would be ruined. I 
told one of them the best he could do would be to stop all he could 
by growing better at home. He has done so, and there is not the 
slightest doubt that for every £100 he possessed then he possesses 
£1000 now, and the “ foreign stuff ” has long ceased to trouble him 
in the slightest. The other grumbles at it yet, but he has managed 
by growing, selling, and saving to purchase a considerable freehold, 
and this with his glass and stock must be worth several thousands 
of pounds, and he had comparatively speaking nothing to begin 
with—nothing, in fact, but what he had saved as an earner of 
wages. When we see men force their way through all obstacles and 
win for themselves a substantial position by the exercise of good 
judgment combined with the best cultivation of that which they 
take in hand, we can afford to turn a deaf ear to the pessimists who 
mope about haunted by the dismal thought that England is worn 
out. Possibly there has been too much slumbering and resting on 
past fame ; but an awakening has come, and the pressure has had 
the effect of stimulating thought and inciting endeavour, the effect 
of which will in all probability be gradual yet certain improvement 
in the great community who live by the produce of the soil. We 
have land capable of producing the best crops, and the best markets 
in the world for their distribution, and if the national spirit of 
determination to excel has not departed, and the industry of the 
race vanished, Britain will come to the front and keep there in the 
world’s competition. 
No. 2119 .—Vol. LXXX., Old Series. 
