to publish them. “Don’t prove too much; beware of the landlord!” a practical gardener once wrote to me. Roughly speaking, I can only confirm Mr. Bear’s estimate to the effect that under proper management even a cool greenhouse, which covers 4,050 square feet, can give a gross return of £180.
As a rule, the Guernsey and Jersey growers have only three crops every year from their greenhouses. They will start, for instance, potatoes in December. The houses will, of course, not be heated, fires being made only when a sharp frost is expected at night; and the potato crop (from eight to ten tons per acre) will be ready in April or May before the open-air potatoes begin to be dug out. Tomatoes will be planted next and be ready by the end of the summer. Various catch crops of peas, radishes, lettuce and other small things will be taken in the meantime. Or else the house will be “started” in November with melons, which will be ready in April. They will be followed by tomatoes, either in pots, or trained as vines, and the last crop of tomatoes will be in October. Beans may follow and be ready for Christmas. I need to say that every grower has his preference method for utilising his houses, and it entirely depends upon his will and watchfulness to have all sorts of small catch crops. These last begin to have a greater and greater importance, and one can already foresee that the growers under glass will be forced to accept the methods of the French maraichers, so as to have five and six crops every year, so far as it can be done without spoiling the present high quality of the produce.
All this industry is of a relatively recent origin. One may see it still working out its methods. And yet the exports from Guernsey alone are already represented by quite extraordinary figures. It was estimated some years ago that they were as follows: Grapes, 502 tons, £37,500 worth at the average price of 9d. the pound; tomatoes, 1,000 tons, about £30,000; early potatoes (chiefly in the fields),