448 



SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 



PART II. 



2342. The time, cash, and forest books, and, in common cases, the two first, will answer 

 every purpose as to money matters in private gardens : where gardening is practised as a 

 trade, as in nurseries, &c. of course the routine books common to trades become necessary. 



2343. The additional books which a gardener may require as official records in his office 

 are a journal of sowing and reaping, trenching-book, produce-book, and weather-book , or 

 some of these books may be very well supplied by tables of common folio or quarto size. 

 The sowing and reaping-book may be an octavo blank book, with a column for the date 

 on each page. On the left hand page, the time and place of sowing or planting is 

 recorded, and when the crop is fit to gather, that circumstance is noticed in the opposite 

 page, and in an opposite line, thus 



2344. Or a cropping table may be used 



for this purpose ( 'fig. 4 1 3. ) in which there Nov 

 may be two vertical columns for each of 

 the principal crops sown in gardens, and 

 horizontal lines for each month. Then 

 suppose frame peas, sown in Novem- 

 ber, begin a line on the left hand co- 

 lumn, headed peas, opposite November, 

 and write the variety frame in the right 

 hand column ; and when the peas are 

 fit to gather, trace the line diagonally 

 down to the horizontal line representing 

 the month (May, in the figure) in which 

 they ripen. This is a very simple mode, 

 as it presents the sowing and reaping 

 of the whole of the principal kitchen- 

 garden crops at one view. A few large sheets, ruled in this manner, might be bound 

 together ; one page would serve for a year, and when a few years were recorded, the 

 whole would present a rich assemblage of facts to suggest ideas as to cropping. 



2345. The trenching-book. Another very requisite book in extensive gardens is the 

 trenching-book, which is simply a thin octavo volume, in which a page is devoted to each 

 compartment of the kitchen-garden or nursery, or to any ground frequently trenched; and 

 in this column the date of the trenching and the depth is recorded. The object is to 

 ensure fresh soil at the surface, by never trenching twice in succession to the same depth. 



2346. Or a trenching-table may be easily arranged thus : 



2347. Plan of the kitchen-garden. For the two last books or tables, as well as for a 

 variety of other purposes, it is necessary that a plan of the kitchen-garden should be made. 



