The Fruit and Market-Gardener gives every week the prices realized by horticultural and intensive gardening produce, as well as by flowers, at the great market of Covent Garden. The prices obtained for dessert grapes — Colmar and Hamburg — are very instructive. I took two years — 1907–1908 — which differ from ordinary years by the winters having been foggy, which made the garden produce somewhat late.
In the first days of January the Colmar grapes arriving from the Belgium hothouses were still sold at relatively low prices — from 6d. to 10d. the pound. But the prices slowly rose in January and February; the Hamburg grapes were late that year, and therefore in the middle of March and later on in April the Colmars fetched from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d.
The English grapes, coming from Worthing and so on, are certainly preferred to those that come from Belgium or the Channel Islands. By the end of April, 1907, and at the beginning of May, they were even sold at 2s. and 4s. the pound. The best and largest grapes for the dinners are evidently fetching fancy prices.
But at last the Hamburg grapes, which were late in 1907 and 1908, began to arrive from Belgium, the Channel Islands, and England, and the prices suddenly fell. By the end of May the Belgian Hamburgs fetched only from 10d. to 1s. 4d. the pound, and the prices were still falling. In June and July the gardeners could only get from 5d. to 7d., and during the months of September, October, and November, 1908,