THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
204 
THE KITCHEN-GARDEN. 
If the weather continues open, much will now require 
to he clone. Cauliflower plants that have been grown 
in pots should at once he turned out under hand-glasses. 
It is a good plan, supposing the ground to have been 
previously well manured, trenched, and ridged, to 
stretch the line across the quarter intended for the 
plants, and to cast out a shallow trench about three 
or four inches wider than the glasses, and from four 
to six inches deep, and then to mark out the place 
for each glass, and take out a few spits of the damp 
earth, replacing and intermixing with the soil some old 
mushroom-bed materials, dry vegetable soil, old dry 
cucumber or melon soil, or some other healthy dry 
material; and when the plants are turned out, to well 
dredge the surface about their stems with dry dust of 
some kind, occasionally repeating this operation, raising 
the glasses in due season as growth proceeds, and apply¬ 
ing tepid liquid-manure. Although the weather may be 
cold, the growth of the plants thus treated will be rapid ; 
everything being healthy and fresh about them, they 
will make astonishing progress compared to those that 
have been wintered under hand-glasses, which, after a 
long damp winter, are likely to have the earth become 
cold and close about them, and, consequently, not in a 
kindly condition to admit of a free circulation of air. 
In some close retentive soils, if planted out under hand¬ 
glasses in autumn, the plants are liable to become much 
injured by canker about their stems at the surface of the 
soil, which occasions the loss of many plants about the 
month of March, when the sun is becoming powerful 
and the wind searching. This disease should be closely 
looked to at this time, and dredgings given of fresh 
slaked lime or newly made wood ashes, both of which 
applications we have seen successfully used to prevent 
farther progress and dry up the canker blotches. Such 
as have been wintered under hand-glasses, may also be 
considerably assisted by removing from their stems 
some of the wet surface soil, and replacing this with 
somo dry healthy materials. The hand-glasses we prefer 
are of zinc framed, and, of course, all with moveable 
[Ekbruary 0. 
roofs or tops, and the base made to stand as a fixed 
shelter; air can thus be so well regulated in all kinds of 
weather, without either punishing the plants with cold 
and sudden draughts, or being in any fear of drawing 
them weakly up. 
The young plants in pans, or those sown in slight hot¬ 
beds, should be pricked off as early as possible after they 
can be handled; at first, they may bo pricked in pots or 
pans an inch apart, and if placed in a comfortable situ¬ 
ation, taking care to surface-stir often, they will soon be 
in order to prick on slight hotbeds or some healthy 
situation under protection. 
Routine Work. —Take into a dry sheltered shed or 
cellar some Endive to blanch; look well after the frame 
Lettuces to sec whether they are blanching now for use, 
as well as the growing plants of various sowings. All 
things should be kept dry, but well aired, and health 
and vigour must be maintained by frequent surface-stir¬ 
rings and methodical dredgings of dry dust, which will 
prevent, as wo said before, both canker and mildew. 
A succession of Peas and Beans should be sown, and 
the earliest crops protected with brushy short sticks, 
having their stems dredged occasionally with dry 
dusty materials. Every advantage should be taken of 
frosty mornings, for the purpose of forking over all ridge- 
trenched ground as often as possible, in order to get it 
into a healthy pulverized condition for spring seeding 
and general cropping. 
Framing at this season requires every attention, form¬ 
ing kindly hotbeds for various purposes, taking care to 
have the materials well-worked by frequent turnings 
previous to forming the beds, and repeated forkings 
after the beds are made, so that both fermenting mate¬ 
rials and plants may always be ready for every available 
light that becomes vacant. 
Lettuce plants, Cauliflowers, &c., and the early sow n 
Horn Carrots, growing in temporary made turf-pits, 
may now be protected with hoops and mats, or with 
straw, canvass, asphaltc, or any other kind of available 
material made into light protectors the same size as the 
lights; and every glass light should be turned to forcing 
account. James Barnes. 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
OUR VILLAGERS. 
By the Authoress of “ My Flowers,” <tc. 
How delightful it is to go into a clean cottage! I wish all the 
poor,—all the female members of the labouring classes,— 
would see and feel the immense importance as well as 
oomfort of cleanliness. It is health too, as well as beauty 
and respectability, and children never look half so pale and 
sickly, however poor their food may be, when they live in 
cleanliness, as when they are dirty, and exposed to an un¬ 
wholesome atmosphere in consequence. 
It is nevertheless a remarkable fact, that however duty 
and wretched the lower rooms may be, I have scarcely ever 
seen the sleeping rooms in the same state; they are gene¬ 
rally, but I will not say always, neat and clean, the bed-linen 
remarkably so; and in cases of illness, allowing for the want 
of comforts and even necessaries always strikingly apparent, 
there is much less wretchedness to be seen up stairs than 
there is below. 
In some cottages it gives one real pain to see the dirt and 
disorder of the whole household, making poverty loathsome 
instead of interesting, to the spectator’s heart; and speaking 
so plainly of careless, unthrifty, wasteful habits, as to cause 
even the feeling of charity to withhold that which would 
certainly be misused or squandered thoughtlessly away. 
It is a hopeless task to attempt to make people clean and 
comfortable against their will, or what is the same thing, in 
opposition to their habits. It really is time and money > 
thrown away. A lady of whom I have often heard my sister 
speak-, whose ample means were wholly devoted to charitable 
purposes, and whose eye and hand guided and superintended 
all, experienced this continually. In every case of dirty 
wretchedness that met her eye, she strove to make them ] 
clean,—would replace th e tattered, broken furniture with new, 
and would, at her own expense, have the cottage and family 
m ade thoroughly clean, and properly clothed from head to foot. 
But no sooner was all this done,—no sooner were the gowns 
and frocks put on, and the women who had scoured tlic 
house departed, than all was again dirt, and rags, and ruin; 
and the sum expended upon the short-lived decency might 
as well have been thrown into the fire. This only shows 
how- necessary it is to give children habits of cleanliness 
from their earliest infancy, for when once the habits are 
formed, w-lien once the pliant twig has become a tree, no 
training or forcing can change its form, and the mischief 
can never be undone. Money may be spent upon such a 
family, sum after sum, without their being in the least 
degree benefited by it; for where cleanliness is -wanting, 
neither orderly nor saving habits are to be found. 
I think the poor often suppose that because they are poor 
they cannot help being dirty. What a mistake is this 1 
