3. VEGETABLES GROWN IN THE OPEN

The Ministry of Agriculture wished to be able to calculate the total length of all the rows of any particular vegetable cultivated in private, gardens, in the whole of England and Wales. It was necessary to establish, therefore, what proportion of all households in the sample grow any one vegetable and the length of rows laid down for each vegetable in each garden. All gardeners were asked which of 29 vegetables they had grown in the 1944 season, the length, in feet, of the rows of each they had grown, or the number of plants they had grown. If there were crops were in the ground at the time of interview the length of the rows given over to different kinds of vegetable were measured by the interviewer, either by herself or in collaboration with the gardener and numbers of plants were counted by her similarly. Where vegetables were not planted in rows interviewers took as a unit of measurement the distance they were planted apart, and multiplied that distance by the number of plants. As has been stated the judgement of failure was the unaided judgement of the gardener. Each gardener was asked whether a particular crop had been, on the whole , a success or a failure. The length of rows which have failed, given in the table below, is, therefore, the maximum possible length of rows which have failed.

This table is not an indication of the amount of any given vegetables which may be produced, since the quantity of produce for a row of a given length differs for each vegetable. It does indicate, however, the frequency with which different vegetables are grown, and shows that lettuces, runner beans, tomatoes,rhubarb and peas, are most frequently grown, while haricot beans, spinach beet, spinach, kale, and celery are least frequently grown.

On a base of 10,500,000 households in England and Wales it is possible to calculate from the figures given in the above table the number of households growing each particular vegetable, and the average length of all rows of each vegetable, or average number of plants, planted by each household. Multiplication of one by the other, although magnifying the errors on the figures, gives an approximate figure for the aggregate length of rows, or aggregate number of all plants, planted in gardens in England and Wales. The Ministry of Agriculture proposes to apply to the totals a factor derived from horticultural experiments in order to calculate the output of private gardens in terms of the actual weight of vegetables produced. The factor will be applied in the light of the gardener’s comparison of the 1944 season with the 1943 season. All gardeners were asked whether a similar row, or similar number of plants, had produced more, the same, or less, than that row or number of plants in 1943. This question was asked about a limited number of vegetables in the September inquiry and about the remaining vegetables in the course of an inquiry carried out in November + , since yield could not always be known in September.

It is noticeable from this in November a greater proportion of September are often difficult to it. The results of the same question in September are no information was to interpret because of the high proportion of cases in which no season than obtainable. On the whole, however, 1944 seems to have been a 1943, although in one or two instances, notably Kale and Rhubarb, the weight of opinion suggests that the season was better than the previous one.