Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-09-21
Work Pays in Agriculture.

AS yet the Texas farmer has only the
faintest kind of idea of his states agri-
cultural capabilities. He has never yet
put the thing to anything like far test.
The fact is, according to good author
ity on the subject, be allows agriculture
TO run itself, so to speak, and never once
thinks of pus hing it. When you talk to
him of any kind of push he don't pay
much attention to you, for he considers
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 irrl-
gatiou-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 culturl5ts III
other sections of the world, and then
coniure I'D 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 i'll gar
dening, soil making, hot water pipes
in the soil and culture under
glass at q certain period of the
lie OIL Lut pIuuS Will D6 tSSSiLldl
features of the gardening of the future.
They will finally dissipate the childish
fears as to the impossibility of satisfying
the needs of a 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
concrete idea of 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 q
good deal of unproductiye 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 see
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.
AZ pT6SSuI, OApOl 10 ONCtf ySdl
about 500 tons of grapes, which repre-
sents a money value of immense proper
tons. However-and that is the chief
point-grapes are no longer the most
important crop of the Guernsey and
Jersey greenhouses. When he walked
through these glass rooted kitchen gar
dens, which do not know what failure
means, and which yield crop after crop
throughout the spring, summer and
autumn, he could not but admire the
recent conquests of man. He saw three
fourths of an acre covered with glass and
heated for three months in the spring,
yielding about eight tons of tomatoes and
about 200 pounds of beans as a first crop
in April and May, to be followed by two
crops more during the summer and au-
tumn. AS to the results he could not
! better characterize them than by quoting
what MIR. W. Bear, the well-known
writer on English agriculture, wrote after
visit to the same establishment,
namely, that the money returns from
these thirteen acres "greatly exceeds
those OF an ordinary English farm of 1900
acres.' The last years crop were:
Twenty five tons of grapes (Which are
cut from the first of May till October),
eighty tons of tomatoes, thirty tons of
potatoes, six tons of peas, and two tons
of beans, (the last three in ApriD to say
nothing of other subsidiary crops.