48 GARDENING FOB THE SOUTH. 



supplies plants with chlorine, lime and soda, and acts like 

 lime or ashes in reducing stubborn vegetable matters and 

 correcting their acid properties. 



With a load of swamp earth, mix a bushel and a half 

 of the lime and salt mixture intimately while it is in a 

 moderately moist state, and in thirty days it will be de- 

 composed. Upon a layer of this earth six inches thick, 

 spread a coat of fresh stable manure, each day covering it 

 with ten times its quantity of prepared muck, which will 

 absorb all the gases and salts. Let the pile accumulate 

 until four feet high, and then turn it all over, mix it again, 

 and cover the whole with a thick coat of prepared muck. 

 If too dry to ferment, add water, and in three weeks it 

 will be fit for use, and will be found equal to common sta- 

 ble manure, and is entirely free from insects of all kinds. 

 In reducing composts of all kinds, the heap must be kept 

 moist or no fermentation will be produced. Keeping it 

 " always moist but never leached " is the way to produce 

 a strong compost. 



A thick layer of the muck should be kept also in the 

 hog-pens and stables to absorb the urine, removing the 

 solid manure from the latter daily, and the muck at the 

 end of each week. Upon this muck also the house slops 

 of all kinds should be poured, and M'here charcoal is not 

 employed, a bushel every three days should be thrown 

 into the privy to destroy the offensive gases produced. 

 The muck, whether prepared with the above mixture, with 

 ashes or lime, will retain all the virtues of the animal ma- 

 nure. Neither lime nor ashes, unless in excess, when thus 

 combined with vegetable matters, will drive off the am- 

 monia. 



Leaf-mould, or the black surface soil of the woods, is 

 of still more value. This is free from the acid properties 

 of swamp muck, and may be supplied directly to most 

 plants in the flower-garden, many of which will not flour- 

 ish unless this material is present in the soil. It is of still 



