The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-02-02 00:00:00

Igriculturt.

Mk'RICHT GARDENING.—For 20 years I have heard a
great deal of talk about the market gardens of London,
and have wished to have oeular demonstration of the
wonderful things done, and extraordinary crops grown
in them. Country gardeners from the Land's End to
John O'Groat's hear reports of three, four, and even five
crops of vegetables being taken from one plot of ground
every year. Gentlemen, too, hear these reports and
never forget them. Three or four crops a year are very
pleasing words to repeat and think about, but a gentle-
man who has a private garden should remember that
his gardens cannot possibly be cropped and managed
like a market garden. A bed of cabbage must serve his
kitchen for a month or two, whereas in a market garden
a whole quarter of cabbage may be cleared, dug, and
replanted with something else in 48 hours. There is •
prodigious demand for vegetables in Covent Garden
Market. We might count the number of wagon loads
that come there, but the Illuerated London Hem could
better give the country reader an idea of their size and
how well the vegetables are stacked on them. The market
gardeners of London are skilful, industrious men. They
make the moat of their ground by cropping it well. I
am of opinion that it would be well for a young gar-
dener, inlis journeymanship, to go for twelvemonths
to a good market garden. I regret that I did not do so
when I was a young man. How many young men on
taking a head place find that they have comparatively
neglected the kitchen garden in their studies. Either a
calendar or an almanac is resorted to, and found very
useful indeed. It is a precious book to them. But to
returr. to market gardening, which, I believe, is a very
profitable business; and ddubtless those engaged in it
find it to their advantage to keep their secrets and
success and practice to themselves. Some time ago I
was engaged for three or four months alongside a market
garden of 12 or 15 acres in the neighbourhood of London,
and with what I saw there 1 was very much pleased;
things, indeed, were exceedingly well done. In it there
were small frame. to the number of 50 or 60 lights, the
greater part of which were full of young lettuces sown
to Noveniber as thickly as mustard and cress. The
lights, of course, were off in the day, and the young
stuff looked green and beautiful. The greater part of
the garden or land, which is light and workable at all
times, had been turned up to the weather by hard-
working Irishmen, steady, permanent, good hands.
About the lot of March they put about half of the
garden in long beds 6 feet wide and about 18 inches
apart. These were sown with turnip radish seed, a
bushel to the acre, and finished well. Two lads with
pistols and rattles, and voices strong enough, were em-
ployed running up and down the garden to keep the
birds off. The men nicely smoothed the other half of the
ground with rakes, for the reception of the lettuces, the
London or Brighton Cos, which were planted a foot
apart all ways. They were planted so beautifully and
exactly that they seemed to be in straight rows from all
points of view. The frames were then put on half sunk
new beds of warm dung, and into them were planted
cucumber plants, which thrived and bore well • a
money-making crop. The radishes were ready about the
first week in May, if I remember aright, and sold for
£4O an acre • 12 or 13 women were employed in bunch-
ing them. The lettuces were soon ready; got a bit of
bast about them a few holm before they were pulled,
and sent to Covent Garden, brought £lO an acre more
that the radishes. Vegetable marrow succeeded the
radishes, and French beans the lettuces, generally
speaking. After these came a crop of cabbage, or what
are called Coleworts, for winter. There were small
patches of other vegetables—here a bed of rhubarb,
there a corner of cauliflower, and just against the gate
a rood of ten-week stock, the double ones for cut flowers

and the single ones for seed. It was very pleasing to see
all. I liked to see the " Miscue" taking a walk in the
garden with a servant and a retinue of cats behind her
—the young gentlemen dressed for a superior school,
while the daughters played the pinao. How much more
I would have been charmed by a visit or two to some of
the Leviathan market gardens of London—a description
of which I am sure would be gratifying to your country
readers—but which description I cannot give—A
Pettigrew.
- -

CHICKEN MEAT CHEAPER THAN PORK.—Everybody
loves chicken, roasted, boiled, fricaseed, or broiled. By
itself, or in pie, it is pronounced tirst•rate by all who
ever set down to a thanksgiving dinner of the olden
time. But chickens always taste of the silver if you buy
them, awl if you raise them they are thought to cost
more than they come to. " Very nice is chicken, but
the dearest food upon the farm ? Poultry is more plague
than profit, and the less care bestowed upon them the
better." This bag not been my experience. I intercede
for the "biddies," and beg for them a little of the at.
tention that is bestowed upon their more grow and leis
attractive neighbours, the pigs. Give them • fair trial,
and they will pay any farmer for his care much better
than pigs, and will supply his table with greater lux-
uries, and at • cheaper rate. And to establish this pad-
tion I will tell you a tale, quite as literal as some others,
founded on fact. In the year 1850 my poultry yard
cost me—

:::633t 981 } $79 "