TRIUMPH OF INTENSIVE CULTURE

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 238, 2 July 1920, Page 7

TRIUMPH OF INTENSIVE CULTURE

A NEW ZEALAND ER'S' GARDEN IN KENT. . At Golden Green, r.ear Tonbridge, Kent, is to be seen what is probably the o 8 ' ; ,S r il en ' n England (says a writer in tno Daily Mail"). Its two acres produced £1630 worth of food in 9 months, or more than ,£IOOO a year per acre. I have seen nothing , quite io equal this, even !1 the intensive gardens of France and or Holland, the best of which I have visited. There would be no call for tiny imports of food if more people followed the lead of Mr. M. A. Philips, the eager and enterprising New Zealander who on the eve of war created this garden out of a rough paddock, built the wooden and most comfortable dwellinghouSe, the glass hnuses on his own pattern, and the dark corridors for mushrooms. Tho Soil is now golden in many .senses, but tho plants grow Bp thick that you must lift their leaves before you can catch a glimpse of thte mould. The renlly astounding mine of edible wealth has been developed through the agency of the • two brothers Lo Coq, wtose names are famous in the annals of intensive gardening, in France as well as England, What first strikes one is tho geometric precision of it all; thousands of outdoor lettuces,with not one plant missing or out of line; many thousands of indoor tomatoes with overhead wires and'vertical bamboos, All eo regular that the plants seom to conform .to the stricture and take on ii geometric pattern, Every inch is used. The r.ne available bank of a pond yielded .£lO in one of two successive crops. Tho manure is used three timid over: first for tho mushrooms, secondly for tbo tomatoes, thirdly for the open garden, M, Le Coq, an undoubted ffemus, has, along with Mr. Philips, developed the best English form of the French garden.

Tho standard crops are: Out of doors —lettuces or spinach, with some cauliflowers, followed by French celery, which bleaches itself; and, in fill patohes which are difficult to work or threatened by the special enemies of tl'fc 'gardener, globe artichokes. Inside—tomatoes, preceded liy Seedling plants and lettuces. Tho crop of mushrooms in the ingenious and specially designed corridors cc.me 3 to an end juSt as the spring crops reach maturity.