378 OPERATIONS OF ORDER AND KEEPING. 



or the teeth turned up, as if you intended them as man-traps. Never 

 stick in a spade where it will cut the roots of a plant ; but if you must 

 stick it in among plants, let its blade be in the direction of the roots, 

 not across them. 



5. In leaving off work, make a temporary finish, and clean your tools 

 and carry them to the tool-house. Never leave off in the midst of a 

 row. Never leave the garden-line stretched. Never show an eager- 

 ness to be released from work. Never prune off more shoots, pull up 

 more weeds, or make more litter of any kind than you can clear away 

 the same day, if not the same hour. Never leave heaps of anything 

 on grass or gravel, as it will take as much time to clear them up as to 

 form them. Let all grass, leaves, or other rubbish be put into a hand- 

 cart or barrow as the work proceeds. 



6. Never do that in the open garden or in the hothouses, which can 

 be equally well done in the reserve ground or in the back sheds: pot- 

 ting and shifting, for example. 



7. Never pass a weed or an insect without pulling it up or taking it 

 off, unless time forbid. Much might be done in this way towards 

 keeping down weeds, were it not for the formality of some gardeners, 

 who seem to delight in leaving weeds to accumulate till a regular 

 weeding is required. 



8. In gathering a crop, take away the useless as well as the useful 

 parts. Never leave the haulm of potatoes on the ground where they 

 have grown. Take up all the cabbage tribe by the roots, unless 

 sprouts or second crops are wanted ; and carry every kind of waste to 

 the reserve or the frame ground, to rot as manure or mix with dung- 

 linings. . 



9. Let no plant ripen seeds, unless these are wanted for some purpose 

 useful or ornamental, and remove all the parts of plants which are in a 

 state of decay. The seed-pods of plants should not be allowed even to 

 swell, unless the seeds are wanted for some purpose, because being the 

 essential result of every plant, they exhaust it more than any other 

 part of its growth, and necessarily always more or less weaken it for 

 the following year. 



To these rules many others might be added, but it is not our wish 

 to render gardeners mere machines. One great object of the young 

 gardener ought to be to cultivate his faculty of seeing, so that in every 

 garden he may be able to detect what is worth imitating, and what 

 ought to be avoided. There is nothing tends more to this kind of 

 cultivation than seeing the gardens of our neighbours, in which we 

 may often detect those faults which exist in our own, but which, from 

 having become familiar to us, we had not been able to see in a similar 

 light. Without a watchful and vigilant eye, and habits of attention, 

 observation, reflection, and decision, a gardener will never be able to 

 become a complete master of his profession. 



