POTTING AND GROWING ON 13 



nothing but rotted leaves, and so on. Clean soil is not a new doc- 

 trine ; greater men than us have always insisted upon it, and we 

 only follow because we have proved its worth. Here is our formulae 

 for this second potting, which will be into 5-inch pots : 



1. Six barrowfuls fibrous loam well chopped up. 



2. One barrowful old rotted farm manure, through J-inch sieve. 



3. Two pecks of sharp silver sand. 



4. One peck ashes from burnt garden refuse, through J-inch 



sieve. 



5. One barrowful sifted leaf soil if loam is too heavy, through 



J-inch sieve. 



No fertilisers and no lime are added at this stage, as the plants 

 are mere sojourners in these pots for quite a brief period, which is 

 not long enough to constitute any serious strain upon the compost. 

 It may be seen, however, that it is a " good " compost and is calcu- 

 lated, as it is intended, to build up and foster a strong, firm growth. 

 To make quite sure the various ingredients are thoroughly incor- 

 porated, we turn it over three times in the yard, and it gets a further 

 mixing in its transit to the potting shed. We wash our pots always, 

 for here again cleanliness pays ; we even go so far as to rinse our 

 crocks, and if there are those who think we are faddists and too 

 particular we say, " not so," for if we use clean soil and clean pots 

 we see no sense in upsetting such a sound rule by using dirty crocks 

 to which the roots will probably adhere and eventually have to be 

 broken away. In crocking we allow one larger crock, roughly 

 1 1 inches in diameter, placed concave over the hole, and around 

 and over this are about a dozen smaller ones, about the size of a 

 small French bean seed. 



In potting, which, with the batch of young plants we are following, 

 is done about the middle of April, we disturb the young roots and 

 the ball as little as we can, merely breaking the bottom where 

 in a larger pot the crock would be found, and rounding off the sharp 

 top rim. We are careful not to pot too deeply, for we have a whole- 

 some dread of stem-rot, so we fill the pot about one-third full of 

 the coarser portions of compost, and having pressed this well to- 

 gether we stand the ball with the young plant in the middle of the 



