The Best Potager The best vegetable garden—it may be classed
as a potager, though of 30o acres—that ever I saw in England has assumed a new importance through the war ; and very wisely its record has just been published. The Land Our Larder (Acorn Press, 3s. 6d.) is in large measure the record of some eight years of practice and research by Captain Wilson in South Lincoln- shire, which is the headquarters of the intensive cultivation of vegetables. He has adopted and adapted an old Chinese and Indian method of cultivation. The whole of his manuring is done on what is now known as the Indore system (which has no connexion with in-doors). By using every stray atom of vegetable refuse he compounds a compost that ensures the health and strength of the crops as well as the productivity of the land. The results (which I have inspected on the farm) are entirely convincing. The cult spreads. It is, for example, beginning to flourish in Rhodesia. One may say that anyone who wastes his rejected cabbage-leaves is guilty of an anti- national act! A great deal of harm, as well as some good, has been done by over-emphasis on the value of artificial fezitilisers. Natural food is always superior to an artificial stimulant.
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