18 



SITUATION, SOIL, 



[chap. 



and when are a hundred cabbages to be eaten in almost any family? 

 Six square rods of winter spinage are more than sufficient to afford 

 a constant supply for even the largest of families. Peas and beans 

 require room ; but they are not long upon the ground, and other 

 crops are coming on between them. In short, long experience and 

 observation have convinced me that a large garden is of very little 

 use ; and that, while it requires a great deal more labour than a 

 small one to keep it in anything like good order, it is never made 

 to produce so much. The manure has to be scattered over a larger 

 space ; the idle ground is by no means idle in producing mischief : 

 the weeds that are suffered to remain on it produce and nourish 

 and breed up innumerable families of snails and slugs, w ood-lice, 

 grubs, and all those things which destroy crops. The weeds, when 

 dug in, generate these mischievous vermin, and furnish them with 

 food at the same time. The grass that is turned in breeds the wire- 

 worm ; so that the idle ground not only does no good, but produces 

 a great deal of mischief, while the extent of the garden is really a 

 valid pretence for the employment of a great number of hands. 



ENCLOSING. 



30. Under this head we are first to speak of the walls, which 

 ought to be twelve feet high, two feet thick to the surface of the 

 ground, and nine inches from the ground to the top, with a jam 

 coming out six inches from the wall on the outside ; and these jams 

 ought not to be more than eight or ten feet apart. This would 

 give a wall quite smooth in the inside of the garden ; and, on the 

 outside, the.Ye would be space for a good large wall-tree between 

 every two jams. The top, or coping, of the wall, ought to consist 

 of semicircular bricks, which should be put on in the firmest and 

 best manner, and the joints well grouted or cemented. When I 

 come to speak of the manner of preserving the blossoms and young 

 fruit of wall trees from the effects of frost and other severe 

 weather, I shall have something more to say about the construction 

 of a particular part of the wall : at present it will be sufficient to 

 add that it ought to be made of good, solid, smoothly-finished 

 and well-burned bricks ; that the mortar ought to be of the best ; 

 that the jomts ought to be uniform in size and well filled with 

 mortar : and that the wall ought to be erected not later than the 



