A January Marvel Farmers in the east of England are
making pilgrimage to certain fields that present a spectacle quite new to their experience. Last year's potato fields look very much as they, looked last July. The relic tubers have sprouted so fully 'and' freely that another crop is already in being ; and England is a month or two in front of the Channel Islands and not far behind the Carolinas. Can the crop survive ? The potato is peculiarly sensitive to frost and it is an almost certain prophecy that hard frosts will come before such a crop can be gathered ; but protection can dO much, as all gardeners know, for the very tenderest things ; and where there is plenty of bracken, as in Norfolk, it should not be a very costly job, considering the high value of an early potato crop, to cover off these unseasonable haulms. Bracken is eating up great areas of good pasture ; and is perhaps the most destructive of all weeds where it finds congenial ground ; but it also is a' crop well worth harvesting and a few loads of it are a godsend' in any garden where protection is needed. It is easily man- aged and much less " unsiglitable " (to quote a village gar- dener) than any nth.' protective covering.
W. BEAcn THOMAS.
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