Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/65

Rh used up advantageously in making a potting shed, and a brick or tile flooring is to be desired. A lean-to with tiled roof, in which a few glass tiles are inserted, will answer well, if a wall can be spared for it, and the whole front may be open, if the situation is quite sheltered. If the front is closed there must be two or three windows. To give an idea of the proper size for such a shed we should say that a length of twelve feet and a width of eight feet would suffice for a small garden. Any way there must be room for handling plants and for a wheel-barrow to turn, and for a store of necessary materials.

A strong bench should run the whole length of the shed, and beneath it should be rough bins with sloping fronts for storing loam, peat, sand, and other stuff. The stout uprights which support the bench will afford a holding for the divisions of the bins, which should be six in number at least, one or two of them much larger than all the rest for loam and peat, of which there must always be a good store. The sloping front should drop into grooves to facilitate filling the bins. A locker for labels, seeds, and other oddments will be useful, and the whole of the garden tools may be accommodated on the back wall by providing rails and hooks to hang them on.

for plant-growing are compounded in a great many different ways, as patent medicines are; but the wise cultivator will not have many of them. We will suppose that the bins are filled with materials. These should consist of mellow loam full of decayed fibre, tough fibrous peat, silver sand, leaf mould, potsherds, old broken plaster or mortar, and the most rotten portion of the manure from an old hotbed or any similar source. With these before us we will prepare what shall henceforth be termed the universal compost. We will put upon the bench a bushel of the loam, a peck of leaf mould, a peck of the powdery manure, and half a peck of silver sand, and proceed to chop them over and mix them with the trowel, throwing out all large stones as the mixing proceeds. If this is well done the compost will be ready, and will suit perfectly nine tenths of all the plants you are likely to cultivate. Another useful compost will consist of one bushel of peat, one peck of leaf mould, and one peck of silver sand. This will suit for the remaining tenth; and upon my word, if you never deviate from these prescriptions, you may become, by proper attention to other