COUNTRY LIFE
A BLESSED or, some say, an accursed word is being steadily thru forward into publicity, as research promotes its significance. T word is hydroponics, which means, or is meant to mean, spine cultivation. You may grow flourishing plants, including man vegetables, without any soil whatever, and they seem to be just good to eat as those grown in the most ideal humus. Water is, course, the most necessary element in growth. Humus itself praised especially for its quality of retaining moisture. If a recep acle of any sort is filled with gravel and this gravel is soused at du intervals with certain " nutrient solutions " the plants grow fast t maturity. All that the plant needs is water with a solution of certa chemicals. The hydroponic zealots are inclined to the faith that w have in their art the cultivation of the future, intensive beyond th dreams even of the French maraichers. Such dreams may be le perhaps to the dreamers ; but it seems reasonable to expect that on small scale and in certain regards, hydroponics may serve a charmin purpose. They are ideal for the window box, a sort of garden th has received too little attention. The urban house may be supplie with a box, that without renovation of the soil—in this case co sisting of clean gravel—will flourish as the rose through a gre part of the year with no more trouble than a watering at interval from nutrient bottles! The subject was d'scussed at some leng at a conference of the Food Education Society some while ago.
Increase of Pochard Ducks The other day, a little way north of London, a single Pochar drake, a magnificent specimen of this most handsome species, u shot by a sportsman looking for snipe. The incident may be take as some evidence that these duck are increasing in southern Englan They have been seen, for example, of late years at vario dates, I believe, on the Staines Reservoir ; and examples of the. nesting in several southern counties have been recorded. One use to regard them as typical winter immigrants to the south. It is a unexpected fact that the conditions of war have tended to -increa the tally of duck of several species in southern England—for exampl according to interesting witnesses in " The Field," on the Medway not to mention the wholly remarkable assemblage of duck on th Thames within the very confines of London. What drives du away and increases their wildness is the nagging of local vagran with a gun. No birds will endure nagging. I knew one coun house owner—of foreign origin—who, in a good partridge countr drove every covey off his spacious property by his habit of solit daily sallies with his gun. Organised shoots at wide intervals o some of the sanctuaries have not done one hundredth part of th harm that once ensued from persistent nagging by one or to unsportsmanlike gunmen.
Tree Fuel Among critics of farming a great number, including Lord Port mouth, are insisting on the value of forestry as a part of the f largely because it provides winter work. None of the critics la any emphasis on the wood as a regular source of local fuel: no I was struck by nothing so much in rural France as the amount work found in trimming and felling poplar trees in the winte months, and the wood was the chief source of the village fuel, thou poplar is, perhaps, the worst of all burning woods. Our little wood spinneys and belts, consisting almost entirely of excellent fuel tre are virtually wasted ; even when the trees fall—or ought to fall they are left to rot further.
In My Garden January is one of the busiest months of the year wherever Fren or Dutch intensive gardening flourishes, as I have seen it in Roue the suburbs of Paris and about Delft and The Hague. We migh certainly do more with the month in southern, though perhaps n in northern England. However, the Dutch frame—and system certainly becoming more popular ; and as to the cloche, will seems to have quite superseded the still valuable French bell-jar, begins to be understood that many more vegetable seeds may sown in January, if the seed-bed is prepared by protection wi cloches several weeks before the seed is sown. In the flower gard this is the date when the value of Erica Carnea, in its many varied is most apparent. It is earlier than usual this year, like both Viburn Postage on this issue: Inland, lid.; Overseas, Id.
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