Fobruary S, 1873. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



WEEKLY CALENDAR. 



COMPOST HEAPS. FRESH TURF, &c. 



FTEN it is very difficult to obtain fresli turf 

 or soil for garden purposes, especially for 

 potting and growing the best crops or plants 

 in hotbeds, &c. The possessors of gardens 

 and parks often look upon surface turf as if 

 it were the finest gold. I can well enter into 

 their feelings in this respect. Getting the 

 top spit of a rich old pasture, so much al- 

 luded to for borders and other purposes by 

 old gardening authors, is all very well, and 

 the gardener who is allowed to dip at pleasure into such 

 a rich store may consider himself very fortunate. In 

 some extensive parks a sort of custom has been established 

 that the gardener may clear a portion of some not-much- 

 seen part of the park every year, leaving the surface rough 

 and open, and sowing afresh with Grass seeds. Wherever 

 he can do this, he ought to feel grateful. I have never had 

 the pleasure of thus resorting to park or common, where 

 the most valuable close fibrous material could easily be 

 obtained, but when planting a fresh piece of cover, or 

 making alterations, I have always been on the outlook for 

 good loamy fibrous turf, and when all else failed I went to 

 the lanes, highways, and hedgerows for fresh material. 



In these frosty days I have collected a quantity from 

 the grassy material by the sides of some old hedgerows 

 that had been grubbed-up, and the turfy grassy matter 

 that was removed before ploughing. This material was 

 none the worse of having bramble and other roots, and 

 small shrubs along with it. Such clearings would be valu- 

 able if merely thrown together in a large heap, but their 

 value is greatly increased if neatly built in long oblong 

 stacks — say 4, 5, or more feet wide, the grass side mostly 

 downwards. Such a stack, say 30 feet in length (or as 

 short as you choose to make it), 4 feet wide, 5 feet high 

 at the sides, and then rising with a hipped roof to a ridge 

 some 2i to 3 feet more, will afford a large amount of 

 valuable soil for potting, See., and will be very sweet, 

 mellow, and full of fibre a twelvemonth or less afterwards. 

 I should have liked this rough turf to be a little drier, 

 but its wetness after the rain would be considerably neu- 

 tralised by the length of the withered grass, &c, which would 

 tend to keep the whole open, and thus partially admit a 

 circulation of air. In this respect I prefer that the width 

 of the regular-formed heap should not be more than 4 feet. 

 as the object is to have the heap of soil thoroughly sweet and 

 mellow without much loss or decomposition of the fibre. 

 To secure this object when the heaps were wider, I have 

 run drain tiles or small faggots through them in different 

 places, so that the dry, warm, sweet air should pass through 

 without wasting the fibre of the soil. The hipped roof, 

 firmly beaten, will keep the heap dry, as the outside will 

 soon become green, but when I wish to be particular, I 

 have each side of the span-roofed heap thatched with turf, 

 grass side outwards, fastening the turf with pegs. 



I make no apology for entering into these details, as the 

 texture and the condition of the soil we use, especially for 

 potting plants, have a very great effect on future success, 



No. 462.— Vol. XVin., New Series. 



and every reader, who for such purposes may use only 

 a few barrowloads of soil, may as well have it in the 

 best possible condition as not. Such a heap will always 

 enable one to have soil suitable as to dryness at any time. 

 It is always easy to damp soil where water is to be had. 

 Such soil "is also more easily warmed than if wet, close, 

 and decomposed. The heaps just formed are not so good 

 in material and full of fibre as I could have wished, but 

 they will be tolerably good from six to twelve months 

 hence. I have a quantity in a heap made a twelvemonth 

 ago, placed in stokeholes and under benches, ready for 

 potting, and it is a treat to smell and handle it. Much of 

 it will have to be torn to pieces by the hand, it is so full of 

 fibre. With a little sand and sweet rotten dung anything 

 may be done with such soil for general purposes. Heath 

 peat soil will be required for fine hair-rooted plants, and 

 even for them many pieces of this sweet fibrous turfy loam 

 would be useful— a matter of importance in many parts 

 where heath soil is very scarce and expensive. It is 

 difficult to be procured in this quarter, even at the price 

 of £2 for a very small one-horse load, and often a great 

 part of that is rough fibre fit only for drainage. 



I have often advised those who want soil for their 

 window plants and little pet greenhouses to obtain rather 

 sandy fresh loam from the sides of roads, and I see no 

 reason to retract the advice. If they can procure as much 

 beforehand from thence or elsewhere as will amount to 

 a load or two, or some barrowloads of turf, pile it up as 

 stated above, and let it stand for a season, they would 

 have a very superior compost. Any sort of loamy turf is 

 better than none, but if 1 could go where I liked I would 

 pass by all the turf that produced fiue. soft, broad-leaved 

 grass, and cut into that where the herbage was individually 

 small and wiry, more resembling needles, or the foliage of 

 a Pine tree, than blades of grass. I can see any day two 

 hundred acres of such turf over the finest loam, and if you 

 take that up from 2 inches thick it is such a mass of fibres 

 that it is next to impossible to tear it to pieces. Material 

 of this kind, carefully stacked for a twelvemonth, becomes 

 one of the securities for fine growth in the case of plants 

 in pots. 



With such a heap to fall back upon as the main part of 

 all his composts, the amateur and the regular professional 

 alike may make themselves perfectly easy as to the com- 

 plex composts that formed so prominent a part in old 

 gardening literature, this plant requiring ten and the 

 other plant some twenty ingredients, and all to be mixed 

 and turned, and turned ever so often before use, until what 

 was really good had nearly been dissipated into the gene- 

 ral atmosphere, and what was left was a close unctuous 

 mass that required much more care in watering, &c. With 

 such a heap, sweet and mellow, but with the fibre unex- 

 hausted, I want to make no composts until I want to pot, 

 and then I am satisfied with a very simple compost in- 

 deed, instead of one that would require a note-book to 

 refer to, lesTthe best memory should forget a number of the 

 constituent parts. The simpler and the sweeter the com- 

 post, the better will the plants thrive. When the pots 

 will admit of it, if the compost is moderately rough all the 

 No. 1114.— Vol. X.LIII., Old Series. 



