Intensive Culture of Vegetables on the French System. With a Concise Monthly Calendar of Operations - 1913 - INTENSIVE CULTURE OF VEGETABLES FRENCH SYSTEM. CONTENTS . CHAPTER . PAGE . I .INTRODUCTON . ... ... .., ... I LIST OF PLATES. Intensive Culture Vegetables. CHAPTER I. Introductory. Les recoltes se succident de six en six semaines et apris chacune, lhomme retrouve sa terre aussi vaillante et aussi docile quauparavant. Parce quil Zui est devoub, il la posskde comme personne ne la posseda jamais, comme jamais amant ne posseda SCL ma. itresse.- La Cite Chinoise-G. Eng. Simon. Crops succeed one another every six weeks and after each the cultivator finds his soil as productive and as workable as before. Because he is devoted to it, he esteems it as no one ever esteemed it before, and as no gallant has ever esteemed his lady love. ONCE the meaning of this quotation is fully understood, it will give a fair idea of the spirit that should dominate the enthusiast in the intensive culture of vegetables. The cultivator must be devoted to and interested in his work and really love the land, the mother of all wealth and production and the most important asset at his disposal. The aim of this system is not so much what a crop will bring or what profit is to be derived, as to obtain from the land all that God wanted us to get from it for our welfare, livelihood, and happiness. In this mercenary age, the love of gain dominates all our actions. We are always calculating on the highest returns for the least exertion, and we are often led to believe that practice of a method is accompanied by big profit. Fortunately we find our mistake at an early date, and as the corollary of this love of gain hasforced us to specialize in a particular branch of production if we desire to compete successfully. We all have a natural tendency towards gardening that manifests itself from the earliest age, but it can only be adopted as a profession when we have trained ourselves in one of its numerous branches. The intensive culture of vegetables, to be successful, must be treated as a speciality it is such a complex system of cost, labour, and brain that to understand it thoroughly it must be judged in its entirety. Everything is weighed, calculated, timed, and checked every crop has a cycle of growth to follow and it must work as a piece of ingenious mechanism for the welfare of the others that succeed it. Man has everything under his thumb but it is only experience and full knowledge of his subject that will enable him to obtain favourable results. George Ville, the initiator of the use of chemicals, has proved that where the land is well treated it can produce three times more than is necessary to feed all those dependent upon it. He has also demonstrated that plants can obtain their nourishment from another medium than the soil. What he has shown is possible - with the help of chemicals the intensive culture of vegetables has done by means of decayed manure as Introductory. 3 the medium of growth and source of nutrition. The grower does not trouble whether a crop will thrive, because it is a positive fact he has given in the winter or early spring all that was necessary, therefore he knows he cannot well be disappointed and should a crop not come up to expectation he can attribute it with just cause to faulty cultivation or to adverse weather. The initial cost of the system under notice mayappear extraordinary, but it compares fairly well with the cost of the establishment of a nursery of similar area...