COUNTRY LIFE
Penalties of the Frost
Until the summer is over, gardeners, and indeed farmers and game preservers, will continue to find lamentable results of the worst May frost within memory. The one compensation will be its effect on prices. A bumper crop of certain fruits, especially plums, brings not gain but loss to the producer. He cannot ve►'y well let his crop fall to the ground ; and, in spite of the newer arts of tinning and bottling, he cannot find a remunerative market for his excess. The frost has reduced a bumper crop of plums—in some counties at any rate—to a moderate or rather thin crop. I went very inquisitively over one fruit and vegetable garden in East Anglia, and the contrasts were strange. The crop of pears promises to be very large. Though a few of the cordon trees were decimated, most were untouched and the number of set fruits most cheering. Gooseberries next door to the pears were harder hit. If you shook a bush there was a heavy and immediate shower of brown and flaccid fruit ; but other bushes and cordons (for gooseberries too were grown in this way) were yielding a very early and a very considerable harvest. Strawberries were much more than decimated. A working man of the neighbourhood had invested every penny he had in a new strawberry garden and hoped to live on the proceeds. His plants are unlikely to yield him a single week's wages. As to market gardeners, it is already difficult in country places to buy any green stuff whatever, other than spring cabbage and lettuce, at a moderate price. Among trees and bushes much the worst sufferers were the walnuts. On some every single leaf was crumpled to dust and it looks as if the whole tree might be killed. Ashes were hardly in better case.
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