446 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 June, 1900. 
In addition to the vegetables, I got 4 Ib. of tree tomatoes from a tee 
growing in the centre of one of the beds, and 75 lb. of Isabella grapes from 
a vine growing from the garden and trellised along the veranda. t t 
Behind the vegetable garden is a small yard, about 16 perches in extent 
Here I keep my poultry. The few hens I can keep have averaged four doze? 
eggs a week; and I raised thirty-eight chickens, in addition to twenty CoC e 
killed for the table. Certainly, the fowls have a neighbouring open paddock t 
run in. 
I now come to the value of my produce from a money point of view: : 
spent altogether Gs. in seeds, 4s. in stable manure, and 2s. on bonedust; 
besides obtaining occasional plants from neighbours. As for the lad 
expended, it may be understood that a little over a perch of garden would AS 
require much hard labour; yet I found I could spend a couple of hours before 
breakfast and an hour or so in the evening, with great profit and pleasure, a 
weeding, watering, sowing, transplanting, sticking, &¢. But there was ™ 
actual expenditure in cash for labour. i 
Putting the prices of my vegetables at the same figures which I used i 
pay the Chinaman gardener, I find that the result from 10th August, 1899, 
22nd January, 1900, was—Vegetables, £3 18s. 10d.; grapes, £1 5s.; eggs; ‘lL 
fowls, £1 5s.; roosters, £1 10s.; or a total for the six months of £11 18s. i 
From 22nd January to 25th March, 10s. 5d.; fowls and eggs, £1 1s.; from 2? 
March to 25th May, 5s. 2d.; fowls and eggs, 18s. Total, £14 8s. 5d. 10 
Now, I am not sanguine enough to say that if one perch will produce & 
therefore 160 perches (one acre). will produce £1,600. If that were so, t i 
market gardening would be better than Mount Morgan shares. All I wis? ‘ 
emphasise is that on a very small piece of ground, with care and the expe? 
ture of just enough labour to give a man a little exercise before and atté 
working hours, sufficient vegetables can be grown and eggs produced to supP u 
the household. And there is this advantage about home gardening—the fae 
knows that his vegetables are wholesome, and not grown by the help of a | sort» 
of abominable garbage. 
LIME. 
ITS FUNCTIONS AND USE IN AGRICULTURE. 
By A ALEXANDER RAMSAY, 
Manager of the Sugar Experiment Station, Mackay. 
Tu use of lime in agriculture has been since the earliest times. Pliny menor! 
the use of this by the people of the Trans-Alpine Gaul, also in Italy, whe? 
was used for manuring the vine, olive, and cherry. In the earliest writing* oa 
agriculture in Britain (1534), little mention is made of lime, and we may, © ig 
clude that it was little used. It is not till much later that extensive mention | 
made of it, and at the present time its use can scarcely be said to be gene + 
being more confined to localities. Pussey says that lime is considered ae 
pensable on the west side of England, and is generally found useless elseW 
in that country. . ions 
On this subject of lime and its application, one finds many different opin ack 
expressed, and, as these are all the result of practical experience in each sme 
one can perhaps account for these differences when it is remembered that : 
may act in such a variety of ways, bringing about the most complicated chan. 
in ways which are as yet not thoroughly understood. 
: : « go fat 
Lime may be looked upon as a plant food—and a necessary one, 1D 8° 
nure 
as it is found in the ash of almost all plants, though when applied as a 2 ¢ on 
it is principally used, not to supply the plant with lime for its structure; 
account of changes it effects, which will be explained hereafter. 
