HOW TO MISMANAGE A GARDEN. 
365 
stock, to eat and trample down the excess of 
vegetation. For this object, he keeps about 200 
head of sheep, which afford cheap, healthy food, 
so far as it is advisable to feed fresh meat; and 
wool to clothe his people, and all the lambs 
he has to spare for the butchers, bring him $4 
apiece. His wheat has averaged 23 bushels, 
upon 500 acres. Would you know why, or 
rather, how he is able to do it upon such a soil 
as his ? By 120 bushels of lime to the acre, in 
three applications, and by plowing with three 
stout mules to every plow, and by covering the 
young clover with a shade of wheat straw. 
Unproductive Capital .—Besides the land in 
cultivation, Mr. Bolling has, or had, about 4,000 
acres of land in forest, lying idle and useless, 
as it has for a hundred and fifty years or more. 
He has lately sold 1,500 acres for $20 to $30 
an acre; which is not more than the timber is 
estimated to be worth, lying as it does contigu¬ 
ous to James River, 75 miles below Richmond. 
He would gladly sell the remainder, as he is 
anxious to see the land put to some better use 
than lying idle and unproductive. 
HOW TO MISMANAGE A GARDEN. 
. From a series of chapters in the London Ag¬ 
ricultural Gazette, on the above-named subject, 
we select the following sarcastic directions as 
adopted by the mismanager in the use and ap¬ 
plication of water:— 
Water is not an uncommon source of profit 
to the mismanager. It is quite astonishing, in¬ 
deed, how easily this element may be made to 
assist in spoiling a garden. 
Foolish people say that it is a part of the food 
by which plants exist, and that it requires to be 
administered with care, skill, and discretion. 
But your geniuses are not to be bamboozled by 
fine names, or what the world believes to be 
authority. They know better. How, indeed, 
can anything be fed on water ? Can a man, or 
a horse, or a sheep ? Even a goose on a com¬ 
mon won’t live on water, but must have grass. 
How, then, should a plant ? The opinion of the 
mismanager is decidedly that water is of no 
other use than to moisten the soil, and therefore, 
he keeps his soil as wet as he can. 
He has also his own ways of applying it. 
When he waters the plants in his borders, he 
gives them “just a sprinkle,” by holding the 
watering can high, and allowing the drops to 
dash on the ground “ quite natural like.” By 
repeating this operation once a-day, he will by 
degrees bring his ground to a nice hard surface, 
so as to keep in the heat, and be easily raked. 
It is true that hard, hot ground is not favorable 
to the admission of water; but, then, it has the 
advantage of looking well; and besides, if wat¬ 
er is poured on it, somewhere or other it must 
go, and it will be sure to find its way to the 
roots—if it does not find its way to the gravel 
walks or a neighboring ditch. 
In like manner, if plants are in pots, they 
should be deluged overhead, from a coarse-ros- 
ed watering can. When you see the water run¬ 
ning out of the hole in the bottom of the pot, I 
you can be under no mistake that plants have I 
had enough. It is true that a good deal of soil 
and other matters run out of the pot along with 
the water; but that is of no consequence; there 
is the more room in the pot for a further supply 
of water. It is true that little or no water re¬ 
mains in the pot, the ball of earth being too 
hard to receive it; but that also is of no impor¬ 
tance, because it is so easy to water it again. 
Some people, on the other hand, soak their 
potted plants very gently, and when the ball of 
earth has taken all it can, they then remove it 
carefully from the water. But that is trouble¬ 
some, takes up a great deal of time, slops a 
man’s legs, and is merely a fancy of folks who 
pretend to be wiser than their neighbors. 
Another method to be particularly recom¬ 
mended, is, to water trees in the open ground, by 
pouring down water at the foot of the stem. 
The man who has genius for mismanagement 
knows the advantage of that. Water is to 
moisten roots; the biggest roots are at the foot 
of the stem ; therefore water should be ap¬ 
plied to the foot of the stem. It must be 
owned that the advantage of the practice is not 
apparent, unless a heavy storm of rain should 
fall immediately afterwards; but as the reason¬ 
ing is correct the practice must be right. 
It will be evident that the plans of the mis¬ 
manager are far more judicious than those of 
the man who contrives to irrigate his beds by 
turning a gentle stream over them. If it were 
only because so much labor is saved by irriga¬ 
tion, such a Frenchified way ought never to be 
adopted. It is just as absurd as that plan of 
warming water in tanks artificially heated or 
exposed to the sun, before using it. Who would 
drink lukewarm flat water, if he could get it 
fresh and cold from a deep well; and why 
should a plant like it? As to warming it by 
hot-water pipes, that is about the silliest scheme 
of the modern pretenders to a knowledge of 
gardening. A laboring man might as soon 
think of washing his face and hands in warm 
water. Besides, plants cannot feel. If you ask 
our friend, the genius, whether he does not think 
that .warm water would agree better than cold 
with a laborer in a violent perspiration, or who 
had been stewing all day in a hothouse, he tri¬ 
umphantly enquires whether a plant is a man. 
It may be true that tropical plants come from 
countries where cold water is unknown; per¬ 
haps they do; perhaps they don’t. At any rate 
the mismanager will teach them how to bear it; 
and it cannot be denied that to harden plants is 
an object with all real gardeners. 
Never have a syringe in your garden. What 
is the use of a syringe? It only throws water 
on leaves; but where is the advantage of moist¬ 
ening leaves ? Even if plants did feed on wat¬ 
er, they would not feed by their leaves. You 
might as well put a man’s roast beef under his 
arm pit and expect him to fatten by it. Still 
more repugnant to all the mismanager’s ideas is 
the foolish habit of syringing the walls and 
brick paths of a greenhouse. What is the use 
of that? What good can it do a plant to throw 
water on a brick wall not within a yard of it ? 
No, no; keep the footpaths dry and nice to 
