THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
193 
separately in five-inch pots, and keep them in a frame or green- 
house. At the end of May we knock the mountain about to 
smooth its surface, and open holes in it about five feet apart 
every way, the stuff from which we spread about. The holes 
should be large enough to hold about a bushel of fresh stuff, 
which should consist of about equal parts of rotten dung and 
mellow loam. If the mountain happens to be made of good 
stuff already, a quart of fine stuff will be enough, but we 
suppose it to be rubbish, and so demand for each plant a 
bushel. When the holes have been filled, to provide a bed 
for every plant, we wait until they have been well warmed 
by the sun, and when the weather is calm we carefully turn 
out every plant into its prepared bed, press it in neatly, give it 
a little water, sprinkle a little soot round it to flit the slugs, 
and bestow a little nursing on them for a fortnight or so. 
The nursing consists of putting hand glasses over them if we 
have them, and these should be regularly tilted or removed 
entirely when the weather is genial. If there are no hand 
glasses, large flower pots must be at hand to put over the 
plants at sunset, and if the weather is bleak, they may remain 
on all day, for a little darkness will do them less harm than 
the frosty east wind, which will sometimes visit us even as 
late as the middle of June. Watering, in common with 
sheltering, must be regulated by the weather, but care must 
be taken not to overdo it. After standing stock-still for about 
a fortnight, the plants will begin to grow. When the weather 
becomes more settled, and you have accustomed them to light 
and air by sheltering less and less, you may cease your atten- 
tions^ and wait for your reward. It may be that they will 
occasionally want water, and that is about all they will want 
for the remainder of the season ; you need not stop the growth, 
you need not fertilize the female flowers, you need not thin 
the fruit unless you want very large samples, in which case 
you must allow one or two fruits only to swell on a plant. A 
further aid in the production of extra large fruit is to give 
weak manure water in considerable quantity twice or thrice a 
week. By some such simple course of procedure, you may 
have gourds, pumpkins, and marrows, to any extent you may 
or can lay yourself out for. 
An Early Crop op Vegetable Marrows may be very 
easily obtained by making up a very large hot-bed surfaced 
with one foot depth of turfy light loam, early in the month of 
o 
