Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-09-25
Work Pays in Agriculture.

AS yet the Texas farmer has only tn
faintest kind of idea of his states agri
cultural capabilities. He has never ye
put the thing to anything like fair test
The fact Is, according to good author.
ity on the subject, he allows agriculture
to run itself, SO to speak, and never once
thinks of pushing it. When you talk t.
him of any kind of push he don't pay
much attention to you, for he consider:
our natural yielding powers good enough
as they are. This disposition on the part
of our people Is what makes it SO very
hard to get up general interest in irri-
gation-the masses seem to think that
there is really no need Of it, since we can
do well enough without.
Such people ought TO study the meth
DDS being pursued by culturists in
other sections of the world, and then
conjure up what would be the result were
such methods pursued here, taking our
superior natural advantages into the
consideration. Prince Kropotkln, writ
ing for the Forum, says old styles, no
matter how favorable the natural condi-
tons, must change, especially in gar
dening, SOIL making, hot water pipes
in the soil and culture under
glass at certain period of the
life of the plant will be essential
features of the gardening of the future.
They will finally dissipate the childish
fears as to the impossibility of satisfying
the needs of rapidly increasing popula-
ton; and they will permit man to al
ways have fresh from the soil, the bush,
or the tree, most of what is necessary for
his life. That is not dream of futurity
1t is becoming fact of modern life. In
deed, nothing can be more instructive on
this account than visit to the islands of
Jersey and Guernsey. 1t gives one q
concrete idea # what the world is rapid
ly coming to in the way of culture under
glass.
The island of Guernsey has to nourish
1900 souls on each square mile, and has a
good deal of unproductive soil. Guern-
sey, like the suburbs of Paris, is a land
of market gardening, which has devel-
oped of late into greenhouse culture.
All over the island, especially in the
north, wherever you look, you sne
greenhouses. They rise amid the fields
and from behind the trees; they are piled
upon one another upon the steep slopes
Of the hill facing the barbor. The origin
Of this new departure was the raising of
grapes, which was started some thirty
years ago, by a few enterprising men.
At present, Guernsey exports every year
about 800 tons of grapes, which repre-
'ents money value of immense proper
lions. However-and that is the chief
are no longer the most
important crop of the Guernsey and
Jersey greenhouses. When he walked
through these glass-roofed kitchen gar
lens, which do not know what fallure.I
means. and which yield crop after crop
throughout the spring, summer and
he could not but admire the
ecent conquests Of man. He saw three |
ourths of an acre covered with glass and |
heated for three months in the spring, |
fielding about eight tons of tomatoes and |
bout 200 pounds of beans as a first crop
n April and May, to be followed BY two
rops more during the summer and au-
umn. AS to the results he could not
letter characterize them than by quoting
7hat Mr.. w. Bear, the well-known
7riter on English agriculture, wrote after
visit TO the same establishment,
amely, that the money returns from
hese thirteen acres "greatly exceeds
hose OF an ordinary English farm of 1900
cres. - The last years crop were:
twenty-five tons of grapes (Which are
ut from the first of May till Ootober)
lghty tons of tomatoes, thirty tons of
otatoes, six tons of peas, and two tons
beans, (the last three in ApriI to say
othing OF other subsidiary crops.