The French Garden - A Diary and Manual of Intensive Cultivation or Market Gardening

By C. D. McKay

A comprehensive guide to the french art of market gardening - a treatise on intensive, year round cultivation for the domestic gardener.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446546680

Book preview

Gardening.

PREFACE

The interest which the French system of market-gardening has aroused in England, and the likelihood of a rapid increase in this closest of all forms of cultivation, have made urgent the publication of a practical treatise which shall be authentic and simple. If the system is properly understood and wisely developed, English consumers—to the great advantage of the nation—will give into the hands of English producers the tens of thousands of pounds which are now paid for the produce of the gardens of Paris and of Holland.

The history of the French market-garden in England goes back only three years. Since then two gardens have been started at Evesham, one in Essex, one in Surrey, and one in Berkshire. The reformatory schools are using the system for purposes of instruction, and some of the county councils are following their lead. Since the subject was ventilated in the Daily Mail in the spring of this year, many hundreds of private people have turned their attention to the possibilities of intensive cultivation, and, though the outlay is great, even the cottagers in many villages are beginning to experiment with a frame or two and some bell-glasses.

What gardens have already been attempted in England have proved very successful, especially the first and most ambitious, started in 1905 by Mr. Idiens, and now carried on by Mr. Harvey. His plot, which is equipped with 2,000 lights and 4,000 bell-glasses, has produced a gross revenue of over £600 an acre. Some few particulars, for which the author is indebted to the kindness of Mr. Harvey, will show how this great sum is made up. From 600 lights Mr. Harvey cut 21,600 lettuce, at an average of 2s. per dozen. Out of same lights, 2,400 cauliflower, at an average of 4s. per dozen, and, again from the same lights, 2,400 dozen turnips and 5,000 dozen bunches of carrots at 6d. per dozen; three melons from each light, occupied with them, at 2s. 6d. each. Of the Cos lettuce, which fetch 3d. to 6d. each, he will have several thousand this year. Were the capital outlay and the labour even greater than they are, such a result would be worth consideration.

To-day, when the work of keeping more people on the land has become an urgent national obligation, the French method should compel attention from all classes. It will certainly become one of the methods to which the better-educated classes, who have a small capital and wish to make a comfortable living, may profitably devote their energies.

No handbook of the French system exists in England. The gap is now filled by Mr. C. D. McKay, through whose efforts—inspired by a close knowledge of the wonderful gardens round Paris—a body of Evesham gardeners were first taken to France. There they saw with their own eyes how the most delicate of green vegetables could be grown in the winter months, and how, by systematic enrichment of the soil and long-elaborated methods, a little allotment may return a man and his family a good living.

Mr. McKay’s treatise is full of hints for gardeners of all sorts, but its special value lies in the double fact that he is the introducer of the system into England, and one of the few British men who have discovered what may be called the botanical secrets long and carefully protected by the market-gardeners of Paris.

W. BEACH THOMAS.

PRACTICAL MANUAL OF

FRENCH GARDENING.

CHAPTER I.—FRENCH AND ENGLISH GARDENERS.

Seeing that the French garden is now really coming to stay with us, a book giving full cultural directions becomes a necessity, and it is hoped that the information contained in this book will be of practical use to those who are unacquainted with the methods employed by the French gardeners who send such large quantities of the early vegetables to England.

It must be well understood that large French gardens are a mistake. A small one requires such an enormous amount of indefatigable and careful labour and attention that there can be no large ones.

When the idea of growing early lettuces and other vegetables in England was first advocated it was poohpoohed. Gardeners said that the climate was so different to that of Paris that we should never be able to keep any of the plants during the winter. This has now been proved to be a fallacy, and the climate in some districts of England is even better than that of Paris, and the young plants of lettuces do not fog off to the same extent. The last few years have been extremely bad ones for the Parisian growers, as they have lost so many of their seedling lettuce plants, whereas here none have been lost. And when one knows that in Paris there are 360,000 lights and 2,160,000 bell-glasses, one can understand what an opening there is here, and that it will require many scores of French gardens to supply our wants. The French gardens sell 13,500,000 francs’ worth of their early produce per year. Why cannot we, with our huge city, containing the population of a country, supply ourselves?