428 Bicton Gardens, their Culture and Management. 



of my men saw them, and asked my foreman (who is a Scotch- 

 man, and had seen such forks before) what use they were of; 

 and when he told them, and added he expected I was going to 

 teach them how to take up potatoes, they laughed, and said 

 that I should find I was mistaken, for such things would not 

 answer hereabouts. I took a couple of my forks, and a boy to 

 pick up, and I set to work myself, and told one of my men to 

 take the other, and look at me, and follow on digging with 

 it ; and they all confessed they never saw such a quantity of 

 potatoes turned out in so short a time before, but they still did 

 not exactly relish taking them up in that way. 



I found their system of working in the kitchen-garden was 

 puddling it over; with scarcely depth enough, when digging, 

 to cover an earwig. They had amongst them but one bit of 

 a spade the length of my hand, and two long-handled spades, 

 so worn that there was no fear of the men over-fatiguing them- 

 selves by lifting too great a weight; one two-pronged fork 

 with a broken handle ; one old drain-hoe ; and two old Dutch 

 hoes : and this was about the stock of tools I found in Bicton 

 kitchen-gardens, and I thought them the most miserable lot I 

 had ever met with. However, I had fortunately brought a set 

 of my goose-necked hoes with me ; but I could not persuade 

 any of them to use them, for weeding was the order of the day, 

 and my hoes appeared to them the most ridiculous things imagin- 

 able. I wondered how the work was done with such tools ; but 

 soon found hoeing and raking to keep a smooth surface formed 

 their method (for they had an old rake or two), and digging 

 shallow and breaking fine, picking out all the stones (the very 

 thing I thought the ground wanted more of). The strawberries 

 were old, and all run together into a mat, which is the surest 

 way to keep up a stock of diiFerent kinds of weeds for seed, so 

 that they must remain in the garden ; it likewise was a good 

 harbour for slugs and snails to breed in, and for the birds to 

 feed and hide themselves in. I soon found that when showery 

 weather set in everything was devoured by slugs, which the 

 men told me it was a wonderful garden for ; and they accounted 

 for it by saying it was a newly formed garden taken out of a 

 field. I could not agree with them, so I set to work and de- 

 stroyed an amazing quantity in a short time by the following 

 method. Getting some fresh grains from the brewhouse, I 

 went round, inside and out, dropping about a table-spoonful of 

 them as I walked, at small distances in all directions, at dusk 

 in the evening ; I then went round with a pail of fresh-slacked 

 lime from nine to ten o'clock the same evening, and found them 

 heaped on each other like bees when swarmed : by dusting them 

 with lime, I killed those that were so collected. I sent a 

 woman or boy round with a pail and trowel the next morning. 



