20 MAY 1949, Page 16

Cultivation Cartridges

Among orchards in which experiments have been tried is one—in Worcestershire—consisting of morello cherries. The trees were not doing well, so the ingenious owner sank a number of cartridges and exploded them with the idea of breaking up the sub-soil. The results were suc- cessful, except in one spot where, it was found a cavern had been formed. That great man of science, Professor Durham, invented a little tool designed to explode very small cartridges at some depth. He used it with success in his flower-garden, and afterwards read a paper on the subject to the Royal Horticultural Society. There may be more value in the device than has yet been appreciated. Something eventually will have to be done in gardens and fields where the new no-digging and no- ploughing theories are continuously practised. After all, in the Fen country the scattering of subsoil over the surface has been practised for generations with proved success.