Investigations on “Sickness” in Soil: II. “Sickness” in Glasshouse Soils

Abstract

Previous investigations in this laboratory have shown that partial sterilisation of soil leads to increased productiveness. In attempting to apply this method on the large scale two courses were open. The more obvious was to seek for methods cheap enough for use in the field, and then to conduct a number of field trials to determine which was the best; this was almost certain to prove a tedious and expensive business and would not necessarily lead to a successful issue. The alternative plan, and the one we adopted, was to find classes of growers who could afford to use our present methods of partial sterilisation and who would be willing to do so. However restricted their number of crops might be we knew that the cost of the process must fall once it was applied in commercial growing, so that the range over which it was applicable would soon begin to widen; a further advantage was that from the outset we should be gaining experience of the working of partial sterilisation in practice. Fortunately we met with a large tomato and cucumber grower in the Waltham Cross district who put us in touch with the class of growers we wanted: in this way we came across the problem of sickness in glasshouse soils which forms the subject of the present communication.