27 MARCH 1942, Page 14

£3,000 an Acre The writer quoted above also gives some

fantastic examples of the value in money that one acre can theoretically produce. His taller figures reach three and four thousand pounds! The evidence par- ticularly interests me because I was once widely abused and ridiculed for alleging that an intensive garden on the French model could give a gross return of £5oo or even £600 an acre. Since then tomato- growers (never more prosperous than today) have published figures showing returns of £000 an acre. Probably a low rate of sunshine in the first three months of the year is, or may be, fatal to the French garden system in most parts of Britain, with the Kelveden district of East Anglia as a notable exception ; but the use of glass begins to revolutionise our ideas. The Dutch frame, the continuous cloche and the new movable glasshouses help us to rival any Continental system. Two or, three acres—in the North-West as well as in the South—are yielding a very good living to many of the new yeomen.