[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sur,—If one ounce of
practice is, as " KyilM011 " says, worth a ton of theory, even a fraction of an ounce may be worth
recording. From a ten rod allotment I have, during the present year, got the following amounts :-360 lb. potatoes, 50 lb. swedes, 80 lb. spinach, 25 lb. onions, 12 lb. shallots,
10 lb. French beans, 15 cauliflowers, 66 beetroots, besides smaller amounts of several other things. I have several cauliflowers coming on, and am still cutting spinach two or three times a week, and I have a fair supply of winter greens in prospect. The potatoes occupied half my allotment, so a 20 rod plot, planted wholly with potatoes, ought to furnish four times the amount I got—i.e., 4 lb. a day for a year, sufficient to keep a small family at any rate from starving. I am the merest amateur at vegetable growing, only able to give to it a half-hour daily, without any help from anyone, so that an average working man with wife and children to help could probably do a good deal more.
I have read with the deepest interest Professor Scott's articles in the Hibbert Journal and his letter in last week's Spectator. It has long been my profound conviction that salvation from our present social, economic and even moral evils can only be found along the lines of a scheme such as he suggests, under which the working man produces his own food. The prospect of so many houses having to be built all over the country provides a golden opportunity of giving
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