COUNTRY LIFE

Three Garden Theories

A trial is to be made in Hampshire, so I am told, of three theories of cultivation which may be rivals and may be complementary. A hundred acres make the arena ; and the three systems may be called the Rudolf Steiner, the Indore-

• these two are not altogether unlike—and the Imperial Chemicals formula. The comparison should be of interest and importance to the small gardener as well as the nursery- man and market-gardener, and indeed the extensive farmer. The trial may perhaps develop into a duel between those who believe in artificial manures and those who do not. The use of artificials, so called, has steadily spread in all countries of the world, since Gilbert and Lawes, following Liebig, established the research station at Rothamsted. They are regarded in many forms of cultivation as essential, as cardinal to the industry.

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An Intensive Farm

I spent a day last week on a farm in South Lincolnshire, where the faith is held that artificials, and in a less degree sprays, are unnecessary and indeed unwise. The system used there is known as the Indore. Its author, so far as English cultivators are concerned, is Sir Albert Howard, C.I.E., who filled several important posts in India connected with agri- cultural science. He has written a book in collaboration with an Indian specialist, Yeshwant D. Wad, on Waste Products in Agriculture, published by the Oxford University Press at 7s. 6d. But here and now I am concerned not with the book (which I have not read), but with the formula in practical use at the headquarters of English intensive cultivation. Captain Wilson, who took an engineering degree at Cambridge after serving throughout the War, took a South Lincolnshire farm at Surfleet, and found three men and a boy were the sole employees. He is now employing, after nearly five years' experience, between forty and fifty, though only about 30 of the 300 acres are intensively cultivated. The capital value of the farm has exactly trebled, and it is becoming a place of pilgrimage. * * * *

The Secret of Health • -

Anyone at all familiar with intensive cultivation will first notice the colour of the leaves of all the vegetables, leeks and lettuces for example. It is the hue of health ; and the culti- vators firmly believe that this is due to the method of composing a fertile soil. The whole of the priceless " compost," •for which such health-giving virtues are claimed, is manufactured in rectangular pits on the farm. Thin alternate layers of farmyard manure are laid between thick layers of any botanical rubbish that can be secured. These " break down " com- pletely at an astonishing speed. Even the old rye straw and reed mats disappear as thoroughly as leek or cabbage leaf. All the weeds, including twitch, which once flourished on the farm, go into the pits and presently emerge as " compost." To correct a possible misunderstanding of a previous note on the subject, farmyard manure is never used by itself, but only as an ingredient, and that not the chief, of the final fertiliser.

* * * * The Natural Way

Though he farms for business and on strictly economic lines, Captain Wilson has • philosophic views on natural as opposed to artificial methods of intensive cultivation ; and thinks that- the prevalence of many maladies and subsequent need of healing or arresting drugs is due to a disregard of certain natural qualities in the plant and the soil. He himself has found sprays unnecessary, so good is the bill of health both of the fruit and the vegetables ; and economics as well as hygiene are served by the method. His system is not, so to say, narrowly Indore. He has been helped and advised by the Dutch and has built in his own estate engineer- ing shop a thousand or so of Dutch frames, not unlike those that are almost a part of the scenery round about Delft and the Hague. He has learnt from the glass-house experts of the Lea Valley. Later additions to the business are two retail shops, one in Baker Street, one in Altemarle Street —started last week. It is said that people are becoming more " vegetable-minded" and discovering at long last that fresh vegetables are much more wholesome than stale, and well-grown than ill-grown.

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Flourishing Squirrels

A good many people have imported brown squirrels into their woods and spinneys and gardens since this most engaging of our wild animals grew scarce. The most flourish- ing colony of which I have any personal experience has its home in a Devonshire grove ; and the parents were imported, I believe, from Eastern Europe. News is sent me of another successful colony in a less gentle climate. Six brown squirrels were secured in the New Forest and taken to a Northumbrian estate near Newcastle. Each of the three pairs produced a family and the place is now inhabited by a score or so, who are doing well. The squirrel takes kindly to a coldish climate and has many resources against winter cold. Their chief enemy, as anyone who has inspected a drey will know, is the little animal that lives on them ; and these half-parasites are perhaps less frequent in the colder parts of the country. Newcastle is favoured by many animals. I doubt whether any urban haunt is more highly appreciated by compara- tively rare birds than the charmingly designed Jesmond Dene.

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Egg Balls

The same countryman who has decorated his grounds with the brown squirrels reports an odd outbreak of larceny on a North Country Links. Four corbie crows " (hoodies or carrion?) have acquired a taste for golf balls. They swoop down on the attractive white morsel and carry it off in the beak. These acts of theft are persistent. It is reported, for example, that one bird carried off four perfectly good golf balls in a morning's work. The beak of most of the crow tribe is an effleent vehicle. I have seen a hen's egg being carried off by a rook ; and those of us who saw it imagined that the beak was thrust into the egg in the manner of a gull with a guillemot's egg ; but it can be carried otherwise. In a Park with which I am very familiar rooks took to carrying off pheasants' eggs one very dry summer ; and when sham eggs were substituted for real ones in a particular nest they carried off these too, and certainly did not use the claw for the purpose. * * * *

Wage-Earning Dogs

The golf ball seems to be much misunderstood. The crows probably mistook them for eggs —at any rate in the first instance. How often one sees a white butterfly fly to a golf ball, presumably mistaking it for another butterfly. I have known cows to swallow a ball, but what they took it for is a question beyond surmise, perhaps an edible mushroom ! The most successful pickers-up of these unconsidered trifles that I have personally known were four spaniels, specially trained for the purpose. Their trainer told me, many years ago, that he had secured over 60 in one day's work over two famous Southern links. The dogs, whom I saw at work, were a marvel, but were excelled by one old fat spaniel on my home links which once retrieved seventeen balls from a shallow pond one after the other. The particular new ball after which he was sent was not among the number, to the grief of the player, who came from Scotland. The dog's owner was the richer by all the seventeen.

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November or March ?

This is the best date for transplanting most deciduous trees and bushes ; but according to a special experimental trial made last year it is better to transplant even late in the spring in favourable conditions than at the autumnal date in un- favourable. In the experiment in question young apples planted in April (which is too late a date) did very much better than those planted in November. The reason Is this. Half the secret of successful transplanting is to tread the earth or even ram it, very tightly about the roots ; but if this is done on a heavy soil in wet weather it excludes air and may quite suppress root action. The modern theory is that there is no best month for transplantation. Any date from November to March inclusive serves, if the weather is comparatively dry. What roots do in the winter is. still a problem among scientific botanists.

W. BEACH THOMAS.