£500 OFF AN ACRE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9141, 9 May 1908, Page 7

£SOO OFF AN ACRE.

Before taking up his work on the fourteen acres at the tenant of the Daily Mail larxn is inspecting several of the more remarkable small farms in England. He saw on a tiny plot at Thatcham, in Berkshire, an object-lesson in close cultivation which astounded him. “Nobody will believe you if yon write It down,” he said; but the figures quoted and the figures we shall give arc well below the higher achievements in this wonderful system of cultivation.

The two women on very small capital started this farm and this experiment in Berkshire took five acres of land. This five acres is now found to be too much, for this reason, that they can find full work for themselves, for their students, for a French gardener and bis family and enough profit for all on less than half the ground. Farmers have written to us saying that you cannot expect a bigger turnover than £8 an acre. The French gardener, his brother, and his contemporaries have for many years near Paris sold £SOO worth of produce off an acre and the possibility is now being demonstrated at Thatcham.

In a bare ploughed field stands a square palisade of zinc plates enclosing about three-quarters of an acre. Behind it the French gardener has wrought what looks a sheer miracle to anyone unaquainted with the system. The ground is all covered either with bell-glasses inverted, known as cloches, cr with low frames. Under each hell were five lettuces; lettuces were growing round the bells, and other vegetables sown broadcast were coming up everywhere. In many of the frames —4ft square —were thirty lettuces, and amass of carrots, and cauliflowers. The heat within the frames, while it was snowing, was up to 80 degrees, a heat one would have difficulty in maintaining in a highly heated and elaborate greenhouse. Within half an acre were more vegetables and fruits, including melons, which are one of the most paying crops; than a good gardener would get into six or eight acres. Though the garden was only started in November, brisk sales of produce in markets as far off as Birmingham are beginning; and the whole square is a hive of industry. , The place is being besieged by intending smallholders in the vicinity, and already is stimulating imitation. What is the secret possessed by this little, busy Frenchman, who talked of how he would defy our climate while with hia thumb he grooved a lump of putty along the edge of a glass light. The secret is in the cropping and the soil. Every inch of that ground bears at least three crops a year, each of them anticipating the season. It bears lettuces and radishes for the Now Year and through the spring, tlien carrot-sand cauliflowers,early tomatoes, and great numbers of melons by the end of May. The soil will do all this if it is properly made. It is wholly a question of economy of space, and of rich, close, intensive culture The secret—in the shortest phrase—is stable manure, glass and French industry. The French gardeners regard their soil as gold dust; so valuable is it that in every agreement between gardener "and landowner it is laid down that the outgoing tenant may carry away with him his soil to the depth of eighteen inches. That eighteen finches Pf soil is capital that may bear interest at 10 per cent, upwards. The ground is so precious that they do not allow space for a wheelbarrow path, but carry their loads, and they will not leave a square four inches vacant anvwhere. The possibilities of a small plot were illustrated in another way. The French gardener and his family lived within the tialisadefin a cottage containing three big and very comfortable rooms. The cottage from first to last cost less than £7O. It was put up in less than three weeks, and a large part of the work was done by Women. Indeed, nearly all the sheds and frames in the place were put together by women. There is much detail in the making of lights and frames, in the Tmanufacture of the soil, in the transference of plants from frame to frame ; but there are two plain facts : first, that the French small-holders of an acre or two have for years flooded the English markets and supplied the French market by means of this system ; second, that our small holders can do the same. They can, .at any rate, if they are women.