SESS 
| or decomposition. 
878 
COTTAGE GARDENITG. 
drought. If the soil be very clayey, it ought, as | profitable reception of the potato sets, in spring. 
speedily as convenience and opportunities will 
permit, to be improved by intermixture of sand 
and fine gravel; if very sandy, by intermixture 
of clay; and if boggy or very fibrous, by the in- 
termixture of marls and calcareous gravels. 
Frequent applications of manure, in some cir- 
cumstances as intermixtures, in others as top- 
dressings, and in others as stimulating waterings, 
are essential to the free and constant fertility of 
even the richest garden land. A cottager who 
keeps a cow or a pig, should make the utmost of 
his advantageous circumstances, by procuring 
abundance of ferns, road-side grasses, and other 
litter, and by not allowing a drop of the liquid 
matters of the cow-house or the piggery to es- 
cape; and one who has neither a cow nor a pig 
should have a hollow pit in a convenient situa- 
tion for receiving all drainage from his cottage 
and all refuse from his garden, and should add to 
the contents of that pit all sorts of ashes, marl, 
lime-rubbish, soot, road-sweepings, and cattle- 
droppings on lawns, or droppings which he can 
conveniently obtain, and should once or twice, or 
oftener if necessary, stir or turn over the whole 
to promote the requisite degree of incorporation 
Liquid manure, or the drain- 
age of a dunghill, diluted if necessary with water, 
is the most effective for cabbages and borecoles, 
either in the seed-bed or after transplantation ; 
and a cesspool may, in many a small holding, be 
very advantageously sunk for the purpose of col- 
lecting and retaining this substance. 
The proportion of crops to one another and to 
the whole garden demands the close considera- 
tion of every occupier of a cottage garden, and 
' ought to be regulated by the real wants and the 
judicious tastes of his family. The crop which 
remains longest in use, and yields the largest 
return, and is averagely of most service to a 
household,—in other words, the potato crop— 
will command the largest share of the ground ; 
and other crops, such as cabbages, borecoles, sa- 
voys, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beans, kidney- 
beans, onions, leeks, potherbs, pease, salad-herbs, 
and a few flowering-plants, will occur in a de- 
scending series of prominence, as nearly as pos- 
sible in the degree of their comparative value to 
the family, or very nearly in the order in which 
we have named them. Assuming a garden to 
have an area of half a rood or 20 perches, to be- 
long to a man who has a wife and three or four 
children, to be disposed in a rectangle of 38 yards 
by 16, and to come into the possession of the 
tenant at Michaelmas, a rough model sketch may 
be given of its distribution, which will serve in 
some degree to direct the distribution of gardens 
of other sizes, or belonging to cottiers in other cir- 
cumstances. One half of the garden, measured 
from one end to the middle, must be marked off 
for potatoes, and should be either trenched or 
well dug during winter, in order to be thoroughly 
mellowed and otherwise prepared for the most 
Seven yards of the length, measured from the 
middle of the garden or end of the potato plot, 
should, as speedily as possible after the tenant’s 
taking possession, be dug and planted with bore- 
coles or some other variety of cabbage; and 
about the middle of January, when the second, 
the fourth, the sixth, and the eighth rows of the 
young cabbage may be supposed to have been 
used, the spaces where these rows stood should be 
pointed over with the spade, and planted with 
long-podded beans at distances of 4 inches. Nine 
of the remaining twelve yards may be disposed 
in four parallel beds, all to be cropped in March 
and April,—the first with parsnips, the second 
with carrots, the third with onions and leeks, and 
the fourth with radishes, lettuces, cabbage-seeds, 
early Dutch turnips, and a few potherbs, rhubarb, 
salad-herbs, and flowering-plants. Some other 
crops, such as pease and scarlet runners, can be 
inserted in interstices occasioned by the progres- 
sive use of cabbages, beans, and carrots; and not 
a few others, which are sometimes cultivated in 
small gardens, such as cauliflower, broccoli, celery, 
artichokes, pumpkins, and a dozen or so more, 
are quite unsuited to the economy and the frugal 
tastes of a well-conducted cottier family. 
A most important element in the cultivation 
of all land is to maintain a constant and judici- 
ous rotation of cropping; and though this can- 
not be so easily and so steadily kept in play ina 
cottage garden as upon a farm, it must be sedu- 
lously observed, and is absolutely indispensable 
to the obtaining of full returns, and to the main- 
taining of prolonged fertility. In the second 
year, with the exception of the three-yard mis- 
cellaneous border of seed-beds, herbs, flowering- 
plants and other small matters, all the half of the 
garden which had no potatoes in the first year 
may be cropped with potatoes, and the part 
which was occupied in the first year with pota- 
toes may be distributed into beds and sections 
for cabbages, beans, parsnips, carrots, and onions, 
—the cabbages and beans being placed next to 
the potatoes. In the third year, the potatoes 
may occupy the middle of the garden, and the 
cabbages and beans may occupy the quarter fur- 
ther removed from the miscellaneous border. In 
the fourth year, the potatoes may occupy their 
original position; and the cabbages and beans 
may be placed next to the miscellaneous border, 
—the several small crops of that border having 
meanwhile been made to change places within its 
own limits. In subsequent years, similar changes 
of place among the principal crops may follow 
one another; and at comparatively remote in- 
tervals, cleansing and most remunerating crops 
of wheat or barley may be grown as substitutes 
for the potatoes, or even, on a rare occasion, for 
all the crops except the very smallest. 
“There is one circumstance,” to quote from a 
very long and excellent paper by Mr. Main, in 
the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, — 
teers 
