Most of my readers will probably ask first of all: What were the money results of this venture? But it would have been foolish to expect that in this first experiment everything should have run as smoothly as it runs, let us say, in the Channel Islands, where the many years’ practice of a whole population has worked out the best methods of culture.
Thus the frames were not ready in time for giving an early crop of melons; and although the melons grown at Mayland were excellent, and gave the first year as much as £188, they would have given much more than that had they been ready in the middle of June, which would have been possible if the frames and lights had been supplied in time.
With all that, the results obtained during the first year were really striking. All taken, Mr. Smith shows that if the gardener has a one-acre garden, and if £494 (say, £550) be spent for 1,000 glass-bells, 300 lights and 100 frames, 500 mats, the water-supply, the packing-shed, the fencing, the cart, horse and harness, etc., and £413 (say, £450) for 500 tons of manure, the rent, rates and water, and the wages and salaries (£250), the gross returns for the first year would reach £300 (making full allowance for “inexperience in this special work”). They would reach from £400 to £450 during the second year, there being greater productiveness and a lower expenditure after the loam has been made by heavy manuring, and personal experience has been won, as well as experience for a given locality.
Taking a one-acre farm, of which only one-third is used for a French garden, the first year’s expenditure for bells, lights, fencing, horse manure, water, and rent and taxes would be a little less than £300, and the returns by the end of the first year would be about £150. “Afterwards the returns ought to reach from £200 to £250 each year,” Mr. Smith writes.
All that need be added to these words is, that Mr. Smith is extremely cautious in his estimates, and that, seeing the high crops obtained at Mayland, and fully dealt with in Mr. Smith’s works, one is entitled to expect even better money results.
Unfortunately, after having worked at the farm for one year, the experienced French gardener, who had obtained the just-mentioned results, left Mayland. Two young French gardeners, far less experienced, were invited instead, and they began to undo what their predecessor had done, in order to carry on the work on the lines they had learned themselves. So that it is impossible to know yet what the results of these new methods will be.
Every pioneer work has its unforeseen difficulties. But, so far as can be judged from the facts I have at my disposal, the two ventures have proved that the climate of England is no obstacle to French gardening. Of course, the small amount of sunshine is a great obstacle for ripening the produce as early as it can be ripened in France, even in the suburbs of Paris. But home-grown fruit and vegetables have always many advantages in comparison with imported produce. Another disadvantage—the lack of horse manure—a disadvantage which will go on increasing with the spread of motor cars—is felt in France as well. This is why the French growers are eagerly experimenting with the direct heating of the soil with thermosiphons.
Let me add to these remarks that a decided awakening is to be noticed in this country for making a better use of the land than has been made for the last fifty years. There are a few counties where the County Councils, and still more so, the Parish Councils, are doing their best to break at last the land monopoly, and to permit those small farmers who intend to cultivate the soil to do so. Here and there we see a few timid attempts at imparting to the farmers and their children some knowledge of agriculture and horticulture. But all this is being made on too small a scale, and without a sincere desire to learn from other European nations, and still more so from the United States and Canada, what is being done in these countries to give to agriculture the new character of intensive culture combined with industry, which is imposed upon it by the recent progress of civilisation.
The various data which have been brought together on the preceding pages make short work of the over-population fallacy. It is precisely in the most densely populated parts of the world that agriculture has lately made such strides as hardly could have been guessed twenty years ago. A dense population, a high development of industry, and a high development of agriculture and horticulture, go hand in hand: they are inseparable. As to the future, the possibilities of agriculture are such that, in truth, we cannot yet foretell what would be the limit of the population which could live from the produce of a given area. Recent progress, already tested on a great scale, has widened the limits of agricultural production to a quite unforeseen extent; and recent discoveries, now tested on a small scale, promise to widen those limits still farther, to a quite unknown degree.[128]