Fields, factories and workshops

by kniaz Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

The large houses of one big company are built close to each other, and have no partitions between. But this system cannot be recommended. Altogether, when I revisited Guernsey in 1903, I saw that the system of greenhouses which prevailed was that of long two-roofed glass “tents,” placed by the side of each other, but separated from each other by partitions preventing the circulation of the air over the whole block. As to the extensive cool greenhouses on the Grande Maison estate, which are built by a company and are rented to gardeners for so much the 100 feet, they are simply made of thin deal board and glass. They are on the “lean to” or “one roof” system, and the back wall, ten feet high, and the two side walls are in simple grooved boards, standing upright. The whole is supported by uprights inserted into concrete pillars. They are said to cost not more than 5d. the square foot, of glass-covered ground. And yet, even such plain and cheap houses yield excellent results. The potato crop which had been grown in some of them was excellent, as also the green peas.[113]

In Jersey I even saw a row of five houses, the walls of which were made of corrugated iron, for the sake of cheapness. Of course, the owner himself was not over-sanguine about his houses. “They are too cold in winter and too hot in summer.” But although the five houses cover only less than one-fifth of an acre, 2,000 lb. of green peas had already been sold as a first crop; and, in the first days of June, the second crop (about 1,500 plants of tomatoes) was already in good progress.

It is always difficult, of course, to know what are the money returns of the growers, first of all because Thorold Rogers’ complaint about modern farmers keeping no accounts holds good, even for the best gardening establishments, and next because when the returns are known to me in all details, it would not be right for me to publish them. “Don’t prove too much; beware of the landlord!” a practical gardener once wrote to me. Roughly speaking, I can only confirm Mr. Bear’s estimate to the effect that under proper management even a cool greenhouse, which covers 4,050 square feet, can give a gross return of £180.

As a rule, the Guernsey and Jersey growers have only three crops every year from their greenhouses. They will start, for instance, potatoes in December. The house will, of course, not be heated, fires being made only when a sharp frost is expected at night; and the potato crop (from eight to ten tons per acre) will be ready in April or May before the open-air potatoes begin to be dug out. Tomatoes will be planted next and be ready by the end of the summer. Various catch crops of peas, radishes, lettuce and other small things will be taken in the meantime. Or else the house will be “started” in November with melons, which will be ready in April. They will be followed by tomatoes, either in pots, or trained as vines, and the last crop of tomatoes will be in October. Beans may follow and be ready for Christmas. I need not say that every grower has his preference method for utilising his houses, and it entirely depends upon his skill and watchfulness to have all sorts of small catch crops. These last begin to have a greater and greater importance, and one can already foresee that the growers under glass will be forced to accept the methods of the French maraîchers, so as to have five and six crops every year, so far as it can be done without spoiling the present high quality of the produce.

All this industry is of a relatively recent origin. One may see it still working out its methods. And yet the exports from Guernsey alone are already represented by quite extraordinary figures. It was estimated some years ago that they were as follows: Grapes, 502 tons, £37,500 worth at the average price of 9d. the pound; tomatoes, 1,000 tons, about £30,000; early potatoes (chiefly in the fields), £20,000; radishes and broccoli, £9,250; cut flowers, £3,000; mushrooms, £200; total, £99,950—to which total the local consumption in the houses and hotels, which have to feed nearly 30,000 tourists, must be added. Since then these figures have grown considerably. In June, 1896, I saw the Southampton steamers taking every day from 9,000 to 12,000, and occasionally more, baskets of fruit (grapes, tomatoes, French beans and peas), each basket representing from twelve to fourteen pounds of fruit. Taking into account what was sent by other channels, one could say that from 400 to 500 tons of tomatoes, grapes, beans and peas, worth from £20,000 to £25,000, were exported there every week in June.

When I returned to Guernsey in 1903, I found that the industry of fruit-growing under glass had grown immensely since 1896, so that the whole system of export had to be reorganised. In 1896 it was the tourists’ boats which transported the fruit and vegetables to Southampton, and the gardeners paid one shilling for each basket taken at Guernsey and delivered at the Covent Garden market. In 1903 there was already a Guernsey Growers’ Association, which had its own boats keeping, during the summer, a regular daily service direct from Guernsey to London. The Association had its own storehouses on the quay and its own cranes, which lifted immense cubic boxes containing on their shelves twenty or even a hundred baskets, and carrying them to the boats. The cost of transport was thus reduced to 4d. per basket. All this crop is sold every morning at Covent Garden to the London dealers and greengrocers. The importance of this export is seen from the fact that a special steamer has to leave Guernsey every morning with its cargo of fruit and vegetables. As to the total exports of fresh flowers, plants and shrubs, various fruit and vegetables (including £555,275 worth of potatoes), they reached £1,115,650 in 1910.

All this is obtained from an island whose total area, rocks and barren hill-tops included, is only 16,000 acres, of which only 9,884 acres are under culture, and 5,189 acres are given to green crops and meadows. An island, moreover, on which 1,480 horses, 7,260 head of cattle and 900 sheep find their existence. How many men’s food is, then, grown on these 10,000 acres?

Belgium has also made, within the last few years, an immense progress in the same direction. While no more than 250 acres, all taken, were covered with glass some thirty years ago, more than 800 acres are under glass by this time.[114] In the village of Hoeilaert, which is perched upon a stony hill, nearly 200 acres are under glass, given up to grape-growing. One single establishment, Baltet remarks, has 200 greenhouses and consumes 1,500 tons of coal for the vineries.[115] “Cheap coal—cheap grapes,” as the editor of the Journal of Horticulture wrote. Grapes in Brussels are certainly not dearer in the beginning of the summer than they are in Switzerland in October. Even in March, Belgian grapes were sold in Covent Garden at from 4d. and 6d. the pound.[116] This price alone shows sufficiently how small are the amounts of labour which are required to grow grapes in our latitudes with the aid of glass. It certainly costs less labour to grow grapes in Belgium than to grow them on the coasts of Lake Leman.[117]

I will not conclude this chapter without casting a glance on the progress that has been made in this country since the first edition of this book was published, in 1898, by fruit and flower farming, as also by culture under glass, and on the attempts recently made to introduce in different parts of England “French Gardening,”—that is, the culture maraîchère of the French gardeners.

There is not the slightest doubt that fruit-growing has notably increased—the area under fruit orchards having grown in Great Britain from 200,000 acres in 1888 to 250,000 acres in 1908; while the area under small fruit (gooseberries, currants, strawberries) has grown from 75,000 acres in 1901 to 85,000 in 1908.[118] In fact, in some counties the acreage has trebled.[119] Large plantations of fruit have grown lately round London and all the large cities, and the counties of Kent, Devon, Hereford, Somerset, Worcester and Gloucester have now more than 20,000 acres each under fruit orchards, a great proportion of them being of a recent origin. Not only was the area of fruit-growing considerably increased, but, owing to the experiments carried on since 1894 at the Woburn Experimental Farm, where different sorts of fruit-trees and small fruit are tested, new varieties have been introduced; and the system is spreading of growing fruit trees of the pyramidal or “bush” form (instead of the old-fashioned standards)—a step the advantages of which I was enabled fully to appreciate in 1897 at the Agassiz Experimental Farm in British Columbia.