COMPOSTS. WINDOWS. 141 



development of foliage is desired the compost can 

 scarcely be too rich in manure, but if flowers and fruit 

 be the object, excessively rich earth will defeat that end, 

 and the flower buds will pass into leaf buds. Composts 

 are made from strong tenacious loam, half-rotten leaf- 

 mould, heath soil, horse-manure, cow-manure, charcoal, 

 wood-ashes, bone-dust, sand, turf, scalded moss, and 

 other items, and some of them are the better for being 

 years old before they are used, as I have mentioned in 

 former chapters, especially in that on florists' flowers. 

 When the bit of ground is appointed the sooner it can 

 be made available and put in commission the better. 

 Capital composts, fit for plants of various kinds, have 

 been described, and the sooner preparation for mixing 

 them can be made by laying up turf and other com- 

 ponents to rot and mellow, the better the garden work 

 will henceforth proceed. So many good composts have 

 been described when the flowers for which they are fitted 

 were spoken of, that it would be superfluous here to say 

 more than to recommend the amateur florist to begin 

 at once to make reserve heaps of some of the most 

 generally useful mixtures. 



If greenhouse, hot-bed, frame, and all appliances of 

 the kind be quite beyond reach, although 1 do not see 

 why any one who can, in propria persona or by deputy, 

 hold a hammer and saw and use nails, should be without 

 a frame, or any one with four feet square of earth to 

 spare do without a hot-bed (I would rather with a femi- 

 nine inefficient hand knock together a frame than do 

 without one); garden-pots on window ledges may be 

 made to do something towards rearing young plants 

 from seed to be ready to plant out earlier than they 

 would be if raised in the open ground. To remind us 

 what may be done in windows, we need only remember 

 that Spitalfields weavers, with the smoke of the heart of 

 London against them, have been auricula and polyanthus 

 fanciers. We once took a house in the suburbs of 

 London, the half-quarter before Midsummer, the garden 

 of which was a bit of virgin land, from a pasture of 

 centuries standing. We had no greenhouse, no hot-bed, 



