KITCHEN-GARDEN PLANTS. CHAP. 



summer, and, though it ought to be good, it ought, by 

 no means to be wet. When the leaves begin to get 

 brown and to die, the root should be taken up and laid 

 upon a board in the hottest sun that is going until they 

 be perfectly dry : then, tied up in bunches by the leaves, 

 and hung up and preserved in a dry place. 



150. GOURD is a sort of pumpkin j but I know not 

 any use that it is of. If any one wish to cultivate it, out 

 of mere curiosity, the directions will be found under 

 " PUMPKIN." 



151. HOP. The hop-top ; that is to say, the shoot 

 which comes out iii the spring and when it is about four 

 or five inches long, being tied up in little bunches, and 

 boiled for about half an hour, and eaten after the manner 

 of asparagus, is as delightful a vegetable as ever was put 

 upon a table, not yielding, perhaps, during the about 

 three weeks that it is in season, to the asparagus itself. 

 What the hop is, in the hop plantations, every one in 

 England knows ; but the manner of propagating the 

 plant is by no means a matter of such notoriety. The 

 hop may be propagated from seed ; but it never is. The 

 mode of propagation is by cuttings from the crown or 

 the roots. Pieces of these, about six inches long being 

 planted in the ground with a setting-stick either in spring 

 or in autumn, shoot up and become plants. The hills or 

 clumps in the hop-plantations are generally formed by 

 plants which have stood a year or two in a nursery where 

 the cuttings have been planted. About four or five of 

 these plants are put into a clump, little sticks are put to 

 them the first year to hold up their slender vines, the 



