558 Bicton Gardens, their Culture and Management. 



I have been told that a good lot of mushrooms was wanted for 

 pickling, catsup, &c, and must be had. I have had them pro- 

 cured, and many times have risen up early before daylight to get 

 them myself, lest the gathering them should interfere with my 

 day's arrangements, and because I would get them before other 

 people were about collecting them ; I have been wet-footed, and 

 otherwise wet up to my knees, in this business. I have had 

 occasion to go to the house about 11 o'clock' in the forenoon, 

 and have seen stablemen, footmen, and women-servants having 

 a feast of the very mushrooms I took the trouble to get while 

 they were in bed, the good ones stewed, broiled, &c, with only 

 a few odds and ends, stalks and parings, left in the very basket 

 I sent or took them to the kitchen in. They have bought 

 mushrooms afterwards for pickling, &c, because it had been 

 said that I could not get them. Now is not that enough to cause 

 one to establish rules of some kind ? I feel a great pleasure in 

 producing every thing plentifully, and changing as often as 

 possible; but it is always grievous to me to see waste, more par- 

 ticularly when it is caused by neglect and idleness. 



You noticed the Onion Loft over the fruit-room and tool-shed. 

 Some of the finest of the onions I have were manured with 

 charcoal dust sown in the drills at the rate of two pints to 

 100 ft. of drill. 



You asked me how I came to think of using Charcoal. 

 In the year 1829 or 1830, while living at Norwood, in Sur- 

 rey, at the Beulah Spa, I was rummaging about the woods 

 for loamy mould, and in different spots there had been 

 large quantities of wood charred. I could not help noticing 

 how wonderfully strong the various weeds grew at a little 

 distance round about those spots, where a thin sprinkling of 

 charred dust had got amongst them. I got a basketful and 

 tried it amongst my cucumber soil. I found it improved them 

 in strength and colour, so that I began to try it with other soft- 

 growing plants ; and thus I have continued trying it, when 

 I could succeed in getting it, with hundreds, I might say 

 thousands, of plants under pot culture. This I shall treat of as 

 I arrive at the different houses. The use of it began in my 

 framing-ground at Norwood, and you are the first person I 

 have communicated it to publicly. I did give my brother pri- 

 vately, some time ago, a little information respecting the use of 

 charcoal, and he has tried it with many plants, and is beginning 

 to use it with every thing. 



I find the following a good plan to make a rough sort of 

 Charcoal for Kitchen-gardening, to be kept dry, and sown when 

 the seed is put into the drills, at the rate of three or four pints 

 to a drill 100 ft. in length. Collect all the rubbish together 

 such as will not rot, trimmings of bushes or any rubbish wood, 



