"Compost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well, if we accepted these gifts with more joy and gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular Antiquities." It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... tobacco of the Rio de Pomba, especially the 'Fumo crespo,' is a dark strong leaf, well fitted for making 'Cavendish' or 'Honey-dew;' the weed flourishes throughout Minos Gerals. The soil will be much improved by compost; and the produce by being treated in Virginia style delicately dried ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... constituents of cultivated plants, as will also be shown by analysis, are chiefly lime, magnesia, potash, soda, chlorine, sulphuric and phosphoric acid; all of which will be found in Peruvian guano. Nitrogen, the most valuable constituent of stable or compost manures, exists in great abundance in guano, in the exact condition required by plants to promote rapid vegetation. The concentration of all these valuable properties in the small bulk of guano, renders ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... constantly going to waste about the small place, which should be converted into manure. Fallen leaves, grass clippings, vegetable tops and roots, green weeds, garbage, house slops, dish water, chip dirt from the wood-pile, shavings—any thing that will rot away, should go into the compost heap. These should be saved, under cover if possible, in a compact heap and kept moist (never soaked) to help decomposition. To start the heap, gather up every available substance and make it into a pile with a few wheelbarrows full, or half a cartload, of fresh horse manure, treading ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... rolled and squeaked and coughed, and the paddle-wheel at her stern kicked up a compost of sand and mud and yellow water that almost choked them with its crushed marigold scent. The helm swung over alternately from hard-a-starboard to hard-a-port; the stern-wheel ground savagely into the sand, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... rudely pull his hand from the subject. Yet have you your uses like other things of earth. In life you are good working camels for the mill-track, and when you die your ashes are not worse compost than those ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... A critic has been mourning because good prose is not being written to-day. This surprised him, and he asked why it was that when poetry, which he pictured as "primroses and violets," found abundance of nourishment even in the unlikely compost these latter days provide, yet prose, which he saw as "cabbages and potatoes," made ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... possessing a clean, fine, mellow and rather light loamy soil. The size of this plat will vary to meet the needs of the quantity of nuts in hand and should be prepared, preferably the fall before, by stirring the soil deeply and thoroughly working into it a goodly supply of well rotted stable compost. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... keep; I have my daily calls on every side, Churches remote and gleve and pasture wide, Great herds of breeding cattle, ghostly sheep— All to be watched and cared for, clipt and fed, Grain to be winnowed, compost to be spread;— Wanted all day in shippon and in stall, What time have I to ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... in Nature comes from the difficulty of detecting its true connection. There is reality there, even in blight and corruption; something is forwarded, only perhaps not the thing before us,—as the virtue of the compost-heap appears not in it, but in the rose-bed. The artist cannot forego a jot of reality, but the obvious facts are not this, any more than the canvas and the pigment are the picture. The prose of every-day life is reality in fragments,—the Alps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... that steals a loaf of bread a felon and a thief? Why is a colossal liar a great diplomatist, and a petty prevaricator a base and ignoble fraud? Why is Napoleon a hero, and that wretched tramp an ever to be dreaded murderer? Why is Bismarck called great, though he crushed the French into a compost of blood and rags, ground them by taxation into paupers, jested at dying children, and lied most foully, and his minor imitators are dubbed criminals and thieves? Look here, now, young man! If you, by a quiet, firm, indomitable determination succeed in crushing out and stamping out forever ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... contributions in the aggregate have been large. In China, in Korea and in Japan all but the inaccessible portions of their vast extent of mountain and hill lands have long been taxed to their full capacity for fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure and compost material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of all of the lumber used at home finds its way ultimately to the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... of a French work on gardening thinks that green turf may be obtained in France by trenching the ground, freeing it from stones, covering the surface with two or three inches of rich compost, and then laying on the turf. The improved soil, he thinks, will retain moisture sufficient to keep the turf growing all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... them. By good capacity and digestion, with no small amount of effort, Henri managed to dispose of his own share; but he was last of being done, and fell in the savages' esteem greatly. The way in which that sticky compost of boiled maize went down was absolutely amazing. The man opposite Dick, in particular, was a human boa-constrictor. He well-nigh suffocated Dick with suppressed laughter. He was a great raw-boned savage, with a throat of indiarubber, and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... sometimes spots upon the sides of some of the hills which are bare; but they are few, in comparison of the whole, though they sufficiently point out the general rocky disposition of these hills. Properly speaking, they have no soil upon them, except a kind of compost, produced from rotten mosses and trees, of the depth of two feet or more. Their foundations are, therefore, to be considered as nothing more than stupendous rocks, of a whitish or grey cast, where they have been exposed to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... steep stirred in with the civet, &c., greatly assists in making the whole of an equal body; the skin being cut up into pieces of about four inches square are then to be spread over, plaster fashion, with the last-named compost; two pieces being put together, having the civet plaster inside them, are then to be placed between sheets of paper, weighed or pressed, and left to dry thus for a week; finally, each double skin, now called peau d'Espagne, is to be enveloped in some pretty silk or satin, and finished off ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... trespass, but my madness speaks: It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds, To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... read out in the audience of the church for the first time. Who were the hearers? The majority of them were slaves; many had till a short time before been unconcerned about religion; in all probability not a tithe of them could read or write. Yet what did Paul give them? Not milk for babes; not a compost of stories and practical remarks; but the Epistle to the Romans, with its strict logic and grand ideas, or the Epistle to the Ephesians, with its involved sentences and profound mysticism. He must have believed that they would understand what he wrote, though scholarship has considered ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... thinks as much. We must plant now in order to secure a spring display of flowers, and for this purpose nothing can be more satisfactory than bulbous subjects, such as hyacinths, tulips, crocuses, and narcissuses. The hyacinth thrives best in a compost of light loam, leaf-mould, and sand; plenty of the latter may be included in order to secure perfect drainage, which is a very important item in the culture of bulbous plants generally. Perhaps no other spring ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... washed by more than ten miles of tide water; from the beds of which and the innumerable coves, inlets, and small marshes, with which it abounds, an inexhaustible fund of mud may be drawn as a manure, either to be used separately or in a compost.... ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... general preparation have been made, or if the ground is hard, poor, and stony, the owner will find it to his advantage to dig a good-sized hole three or four feet across and two deep, filling in and around the tree with fine rich surface soil. If he can obtain some thoroughly decomposed compost or manure, for instance, as the scrapings of a barnyard, or rich black soil from an old pasture, to mix with the earth beneath and around the roots, the good effects will be seen speedily; but in no instance should raw manure from the stable, or anything that must decay ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... same as farmyard manure the former is better. Reasons for this being so. A compost of pink soil and manures may be made, which will equal good farmyard manure, and ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... his gifts and accomplishments. It is the superficial stratum in which praise and blame find their sphere of action,—the region of comparisons,—the habitat where envy and jealousy are to be looked for, if they have not been weeded out and flung into the compost-heap of dead vices, with which, if we understand moral husbandry, we fertilize our living virtues. It is quite foolish to abuse this thin upper layer of our mental soil. The grasses do not strike their roots deep in towards the centre, like the oaks, but they are the more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... anxious faces (I really must except my own, for my face never looked anxious till I thought of marrying, or pale till I took to scribbling), the possessors of which were experiencing a little the torment of Tantalus. The palisades, those graves of sand, turned into a rich compost by the ever-recurring burial, were directly under the windows, and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, in palpable currents, through the jalousies, into the heated room; and, had one thrust his head into the moonlight and looked ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... from and after the 24th day of June, 1732, all and every the goods, wares, and merchandises, and other commodities, carried and conveyed on the said River Ouse, above Wharfe mouth, except such manure, dung, compost, or lime only, as shall be water borne, and used and applied in tillage; and also except all timber, stone, and other materials, made use of in or about the works necessary for improving of the navigation of the said ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee
... cent to the value of the whole. Open sheds protect from sun and rain, and they are emptied as often as is necessary, regardless of season, for I believe that the fields can care for manure better than a compost heap. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... Manner of planting the Sets; of Dressing, Pruning, and Governing the Plantation; of the Ordering and Cultivating the Vine-yard after the first four years, till it needs renewing; as also of the manner and time, how and when to manure the Vine-yard, with Compost, will be better understood from the Book it self, than can be here described; the Author pretending, that, those few observations of his, as the native production of his own Experience, being practised with ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... some advance their ground from 5s. per acre to L5 by this means', and 30 acres of cherries near Sittingbourne had realized L1,000 in one year. His recipe for making old fruit trees bear well savours of a time when old women were still burnt as witches. 'First split his root, then apply a compost of pigeon's dung, lees of wine, or stale wine, and a little brimstone'. The tithes of wine in Gloucestershire were 'in divers parishes considerably great', and wine was then made in Kent and Surrey, notably by ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Towards this mixture there is the top spit just referred to. Add any available lime rubbish from destroyed buildings, sand, peat, leaf-mould, surface soil raked from the rear of the shrubberies, &c., and the result should be a good compost obtained at ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... seeing Lincoln in the summer of 1861, on the steps of the White House, "answering very simply and kindly to the marks of respect some soldiers had come to pay him, who stood in deep ranks on the grass, that had been top-dressed with compost enough to cover the whole District of Columbia, as the chairman of the committee that had to pass the account told me. And once, curiously, I saw only his feet. It was soon after the battle of Bull Run, when some say that we ran, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... way over 3 years this is what we found best in handling trees. In the meadow where we planted honey locust, and on a rocky knoll with oaks, the first year we applied a shovelful of night soil and a light mulch of leaf compost. The second summer we mowed, raked, and forked the hay to the tree in a wide circle. It was amazing the life activity that was created under this mulch by the next spring. Mice were controlled by pulling the mulch 3 inches from the tree in early fall and with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Broughton, of Herefordshire, was the man that brought in the husbandry of soap ashes. He living at Bristoll, where much soap is made, and the haven there was like to have been choak't up with it, considering that ground was much meliorated by compost, &c. did undertake this experiment, and having land near the city, did accordingly improve it with soap ashes. I remember the gentleman very well. He dyed about 1650, I believe near 90 yeares old, and was ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... around which were scattered butterflies' and grasshoppers' legs and wings, parts of frogs and toads, and the little pellets usually ejected by owls in the process of digestion. I also found that these mounds were invariably covered by an animal compost gathered from the surrounding prairie. I resolved to put my theory to the test by digging into one of these holes. Here the Indian boy was a great help, as he thoroughly knew his verb "to dig." I followed the hole down through hardpan to a depth of three feet, ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... to-night, with noble knowledge crammed, I 'mid this human compost take my place, I, once a poet, now so dead and damned, The woeful tears half freezing on my face: "O God!" I cry, "let me but take his shape, Moko's, the Blest, the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... disgusting, it's beastly. You Yankees load your stomachs as a Devonshire man does his cart, as full as it can hold, and as fast as he can pitch it with a dung-fork, and drive off; and then you complain that such a load of compost is too heavy for you. Dyspepsy, eh! infernal guzzling, you mean. I'll tell you what, Mr. Secretary of Legation, take half the time to eat that you do to drawl out your words, chew your food half as much as you do your filthy ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the greenhouse, sitting-room, or hanging baskets. Plant six tubers in a 5-in. pot, with their growing ends inclining to the centre and the roots to the edge of the pot, and cover them an inch deep with a compost of peat, loam, and leaf-mould, or a light, sandy soil. Keep them well supplied with liquid manure while in a growing state. Height, 6 in. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... found to contain the greatest portion of the real pabulum of plants, it has long been used for such as are planted in pots; and the component parts of bog-earth being of a light nature, a mixture of the two in proper proportions will form a compost in which most kinds of plants will succeed. Attention should be paid to the consistence of the loam; as the more stiff it is, the greater portion of the other ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... enough in itself to reveal the grub's identity to the least expert eyes. Dig into the vegetable mould formed by the decayed wood in the hollow trunks of old willow-trees, search at the foot of rotten stumps or in heaps of compost; and, if you come upon a plumpish grub moving along on its back, there is no room for doubt: your discovery is ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... describing, for the fragment of a jaw-bone, with several teeth in it, was found in a room which seems to have been the stable; and the floor about the mill is paved with rough pieces of stone, while in the rest of the rooms it is made of stucco or compost. The use of water-mills, however, was not unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius describes their construction in terms not inapplicable to the mechanism of a common mill of the present day, and other ancient authors refer to them. "Set not your hands to the mill, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... can generally be propagated and kept true; but, as Mr. Salter remarks, "every sport should be thoroughly tested in different soils before it can be really considered as fixed, as many have been known to run back when planted in rich compost; but when sufficient care and time are expended in proving, there will exist little danger of subsequent disappointment." Mr. Salter informs me that with all the varieties the commonest kind of bud-variation is the production of yellow flowers, and, as this ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... they did not so affect me; still other hours followed in which I found myself smacking my lips over some tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which was a sort of dumplings containing a compost made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... drainage is well-nigh perfect, the border must be under-drained with tile and in any case a layer of old brick or stone is needful to make certain that the drainage is perfect. At least two feet, better three feet, of the border compost should be placed above the drainage material. In a border made as described, the grape finds ample root-run, but not too much, as in a surprisingly short time roots are found throughout all ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... in every form of sensuality and vice, yet glittering with the veneer of a social polish which made it the admiration of the world. A dissolute king was ruled by a succession of mistresses, and all the courtiers vied in emulating the vice and extravagance of their master. Yet in this foul compost-heap art and literature nourished with a tropical luxuriance. Voltaire was at the height of his splendid career, the most brilliant wit and philosopher of his age. The lightnings of his mockery attacked with an incessant play the social, political, and religious shams of the period. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... matter of fact, proposals have been made by noted scientists to utilize pulverized rock of this kind as compost to assist the fields in a natural way, and so to restore them to their former producing power, which would thus enable plants, animals, and man, alike, to regain those substances indispensable to proper ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the windows, cased in wood and formerly adorned with carvings, now destroyed by the action of the weather, had continued plumb; some bobbed forward, others tipped backward, while a few seemed disposed to fall apart; all had a compost of earth, brought from heaven knows where, in the nooks and crannies hollowed by the rain, in which the spring-tide brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping plants, and sparse herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its supports. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... cuttings, offsets and division in spring. They may be expected to yield somewhat of a crop the first season, but much more the second. In field culture they will continue profitable for several years, provided that each autumn the tops are cut off near the ground and a liberal dressing of manure, compost or even rich soil is given. In ordinary garden practice it is well also to observe this plan, but usually mint is there allowed to shift for itself, along with the horseradish and the Jerusalem artichoke ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... inside was too much for its infirm constitution. Its weak points were discovered by the captain. A bounce into one of its salient supports proved fatal, and the structure finally collapsed, burying its family in a compost of ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... one can see at least six Persian walnut trees higher than the house tops. Pollination is not a problem, and all trees are good producers. Young trees are in demand for planting, and seedling trees, coming up in the flower beds, compost piles, fence corners, and other places where squirrels have hidden nuts, are carefully transplanted ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... of the lectoor was as they sa in architectoor of the compost like ordoor; first a stratter of this, then a stratter of that; that is to sa—kinder mixed, you know. It was on the aneckdotale plan, and speakin of aneckdotes reminds me of a little story—it is ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... big; it's a kind of a right, When the tongue has got loose and the waistband grown tight; But, as pretty Miss Prudence remarked to her beau, On its own heap of compost ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Dates in compost. Creme motley. Carpe. Dorrey. Turbut. Tench. Peerch with gogyns. Sturgeon fresshe. Welkes. Porpes rostid. Memise fried. Creves de ewe douce. Shrympes grosse. Elis with laumprons rostid. A Lessh callid the White Lessh, with hauthorne leves grene and redd hawes. A mete in paste ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... must be deemed a labour due To no mean hand, and asks the touch of taste. Here also grateful mixture of well-matched And sorted hues (each giving each relief, And by contrasted beauty shining more) Is needful. Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home, But elegance, chief grace the garden shows And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind. Without it, all is Gothic as the scene To which the insipid citizen resorts, Near yonder heath; where industry misspent, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... structure are often five or six feet thick, and the roofs are all finished off with a thick layer of mud laid on with marvellous smoothness. These huts form the winter habitations of the beavers, and as this compost of mud, grass and branches becomes congealed into a solid mass by the severe frosts of our northern winter, it can easily be seen that they afford a safe shelter against any intruder and particularly the wolverine, which ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... whole existence is in the soil. He worships things under the earth. Dust he is, and to dust he shall return; (the sooner the better!) He prattles of potatoes, talks of turnips, harangues about horse-radish, knows no composition except compost. Speak to him of manners, and he will answer of manures. Like the Egyptians, he worships a bull; and has all the fondness of Pythagoras for beans. His only literature is Liebig's Animal Chemistry; his lighter reading, the Cultivator and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... abilities of his sons were going to be greater than his own. His eldest son was, nevertheless, banished to a Long Island farm on a pension, "because he could not be trusted to do business." The same son once modestly asked the Commodore if he would allow him to have the compost that had been for a year accumulating outside the Fifth Avenue barns. "Just one load, and no more," said pater. William thereupon took twenty teams and as many men, and transferred the entire pile to a barge moored in the river. It was a barge-load. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... experimented in this direction with the most encouraging results. A rich, loamy soil is very good—it is rather cold at the bottom, but invigorating. Light, sandy clay would suit sedentary persons such as parsons, artists, judges. In poor ground some superphosphates, or a light compost could be strewn by each person around himself. Families would take turns in pruning each other, and so forth; but all these incidental matters would rapidly adjust themselves. After a time we might succeed in propagating ourselves by seeds or slips, and ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress. And also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... carried from the wild to the cultivated. For instance, the local soil in which the native plants of a given family nourish is almost always sure to agree better with its cultivated, and perhaps tropical, cousin than the most elaborately and scientifically prepared compost. This is a matter that both simplifies and guarantees better success to the woman who is her own gardener and lives in a country sufficiently open for her to be able to collect soil of various qualities for special purposes. ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... place should be selected, and the refuse should be kept covered with earth to keep off the flies and absorb the odors that arise from the fermenting material, and to prevent its being carried away by the wind. Lime should be sprinkled about the compost heap, and from time to time it should be drawn away and the place covered with clean earth. It is very unsanitary to throw all of the kitchen refuse in the same place year after year without resorting to any means for keeping the soil ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... to follow the run of a scrub turkey, or because the boys knew of a scrub hen's mound, where the rich pink eggs were raked out by the gins. It was gin's work to overhaul the mounds; the boys did not like to do the digging with their hands, for often little snakes bedded themselves in the warm compost—snakes, though they bite not to the death, make one's hands big and sore. Why incur any risk when there was a well-disciplined woman to take it? There was a turn off (which was officially followed) leading to a huge tree where in the hollow bees had hived; ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... away for it is full of richness, although not quite in available form. So pack the sod grass side down one square on another. Leave it to rot and to weather. When rotted it makes a fine fertilizer. Such a pile of rotting vegetable matter is called a compost pile. All through the summer add any old green vegetable matter to this. In the fall put the autumn leaves on. A fine lot of goodness is ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... should be placed in a pot filled with loam and bog-earth, or rotten leaves, well mixed, and plunged in a north border, where in severe seasons it will be proper to shelter it; if the whole border be formed of the same soil or compost the pot will be ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... concerning the Cure of Old Age, and Preservation of Youth: There being nothing so proper for Sallet Herbs and other Edule Plants, as the Genial and Natural Mould, impregnate, and enrich'd with well-digested Compost (when requisite) without any Mixture of Garbage, odious Carrion, and other filthy Ordure, not half consum'd and ventilated and indeed reduc'd to the next Disposition of Earth it self, as it should be; and that in ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... performed in the soil by carbonaceous matter were fully explained in a former section (p. 79, Sect. 2), and we will now examine merely its action with regard to manures. When properly applied to manures, in compost, ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... de Borch and M. de Bornholz give the chief accounts of the efforts that have been made towards the cultivation of these fungi. They state that a compost is prepared of pure mould and vegetable soil mixed with dry leaves and sawdust, in which, when properly moistened, mature truffles are placed in winter, either whole or in fragments, and that after the lapse of some time small truffles are found in the compost.[I] ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... be made quite rich with well rotted compost. I like the plan of preparing the bed a long time before you get ready to set your plants. You can then work the soil over, time after time, and every time kill a crop of weeds. More plants are set in the spring than any other ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... him the most important thing in the world. It is not your fault that this man perforce inhabits a body to which the most important thing in the world is a woman. Certainly it is not your fault that this compost makes yet another jumble of his two desires, and persuades himself that the two are somehow allied. The woman inspires, the woman uplifts, the woman strengthens him for his high work, saith he! Well, well, perhaps there ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... is interested in learning about the role of compost in soil fertility, better soil management methods and growing healthier, more nutritious food. Much like a serious home bread baker, audience one seeks exacting composting recipes that might result in higher quality. Audience two primarily wants to know the easiest and most convenient ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... a great deal of money, and—wait five years! Vegetables dash out of the husbandman's garden to reappear at the city market. Madame Deschars, who possesses a gate-keeper that is at the same time a gardener, confesses that the vegetables raised on her land, beneath her glass frames, by dint of compost and top-soil, cost her twice as much as those she used to buy at Paris, of a woman who had rent and taxes to pay, and whose husband was an elector. Despite the efforts and pledges of the gate-keeper-gardener, early peas and things at Paris are a ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... in ore, as clore, shitte, with all his compost, that is to saye, disclore, unshitte, forclore, shitte out, etc. whiche do make in their present, clos, declos, forclos, etc. and for cause that rules ben infinites, and that they ben more necessary for the teacher than for the lernar, I suppose ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... learns to transmute compost into grass and grain, and these into beef, he usually stops, content. To be a scientist in the true sense, one must love knowledge for its own sake, and not merely for what it will bring on market-day, and so the Humboldts were led on through the stage of wanting to make money, to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... up some pills of patience, to be taken occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to whom St. Luke ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... which capacity Marchant acted on several occasions for Francis I.As was the case with his contemporaries, Marchant's earliest books possessed no mark, and one of the first of the publications in which it appeared was the "Compost et Calendrier des Bergiers," 1496. The De Marnef family also make a big show in the annals of French typography, particularly in the way of Marks, the various members using, between 1481 and 1554, nearly thirty examples, including ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... loyal, and when he saw his mother's tears and his sister's shame, something rose within him that had it been given play might have made a man of him, but, being crushed, died and rotted, and in the compost it made all the evil of his nature flourished. The looks and gibes of his fellow-employees at the barber-shop forced him to leave his work there. Kit, bowed with shame and grief, dared not appear upon the streets, where the girls who had envied her now hooted at her. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... no exception. We can ride if we know how and are going her way, or we can be run over if we fall or make a mistake. Nature does not care whether the hunter slay the beast or the beast the hunter; she will make good compost of them both, and her ends are prospered ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... retorted the bear in a rage; "you expect my oil to give you hair upon your tail, when it will not give me even a tail. Why don't you try under-draining, or top-dressing with light compost?" ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... that, because the Japanese are careful to utilise human waste products, no other manure is employed. There is an enormous consumption of chemical fertilisers. Then there are brought into service all sorts of crop-feeding materials, such as straw, grass, compost, silkworm waste, fish waste, and of course the manure produced by such stock as is kept.[42] In Aichi the value of human waste products used on the land is only a quarter of the value of the bean cake and ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the property of such a mendicant as I am, which I have scraped together grain by grain." He said: "There is no occasion to vex yourself, for I mean it for the Tartars, as impurities are suiting for the impure:—They said, 'The compost of a dunghill is unclean.' We replied, 'That with it we will fill up the chinks of a necessary.'—If the water of a Christian's well is defiled, and we wash a Jew's corpse in it, there is no sin." I have heard that he disobeyed the royal command, questioned its justice, and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... out of their pots; their roots reduced and repotted into small pots in a light sandy loamy compost. Sow seeds, and also ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Nurnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought? How shall he give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... well versed in it that at the examination he would recite it by heart backward, and did sometimes prove on his fingers to his mother quod de modis significandi non erat scientia. Then did he read to him the "Compost," on which he spent sixteen years and two months, and that justly at the time his said preceptor died, which was in the year one thousand ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... assume the princely state of a governor of Jamaica. Six hundred thousand African slaves were introduced during the last century, of which number something over half remained at the beginning of this. Human blood flowed in fertilizing streams over the island, and out of this ghastly compost rose an opulence so splendid as to silence for generations all inquiry into its origin or character. It secured its possessors not only easy access, but frequent intermarriages among the aristocracy of England, who thus in time came to be among ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... section on this continent. There is no stone, and no running water except streams having their rise in the interior, passing through these hills to their debouchment into the river. The entire formation is a rich compost, and in great part soluble in water; this causes them to wash, and when not cultivated with care, they cut into immense gullies and ravines. They are in some places almost mountainous in height and exceedingly precipitous. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and stropped his razor and put it back in the case; he threw out the wash-water on the compost-pile, and went into the cabin, putting on his shirt and his belt, and passed on through to the front porch, where his father was already eating at the table. The people of the Toon liked to eat in the open; it was something they'd always done, just as they'd ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... under cover, and turned frequently at first to prevent burning out; or sod and manure can be rotted together, stacking them in alternate layers and forking over two or three times after rotting has begun. The manure furnishes plant food to the compost, the rotted sod "body," the leaf-mould water-absorbing qualities, and ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... Rogers' raw stock, not petroleum. And his success hinged on bringing humanity to bear on petroleum, or, if you please, by mixing brains with rock-oil, somewhat as Horace Greeley advised the farmer to mix brains with his compost. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... I'd hire him to fracture my land 3 or 4 feet deep. Painstakingly double or even triple digging will also loosen this layer. Another possible strategy for a smaller garden would be to rent a gasoline-powered posthole auger, spread manure or compost an inch or two thick, and then bore numerous, almost adjoining holes 4 feet deep all ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... restored, not a palace repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the work with his Roman and pagan title of "Pontifex Maximus." It is a haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which wrought the triumph of Catholicism ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... are broken into very simple compounds, some of them, indeed, being dissipated into the air, but other portions are retained and then oxidized, and these latter become the real fertilizing materials. Through the agency of bacteria the compost heap thus becomes the great source of plant food to the farmer. Into this compost heap he throws garbage, straw, vegetable and animal substances in general, or any organic refuse which may be at hand. The various bacteria seize ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... ever since. Nothing has been done in German literature for which we have not a counterpart, done as well or better—except the work of Heine, and Heine was a Jew. His opinion of the Prussians was that they are a compost of beer, deceit, and sand. French literature and English literature can be compared, throughout their long course, sometimes to the great advantage of the French. German literature cannot ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... [Sidenote: 182] It will but skin and filme the Vlcerous place, Whil'st ranke Corruption mining all within, [Sidenote: whiles] Infects vnseene, Confesse your selfe to Heauen, Repent what's past, auoyd what is to come, And do not spred the Compost or the Weedes, [Sidenote: compost on the] To make them ranke. Forgiue me this my Vertue, [Sidenote: ranker,] For in the fatnesse of this pursie[5] times, [Sidenote: these] Vertue it selfe, of Vice must pardon begge, Yea courb,[6] and woe, for ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... they cut the ends of all the roots, good or bad, and buried them in a compost. Six months later the plants were dead. Fresh orders to the nurseryman, and fresh plantings in still deeper holes. But the rain softening the soil, the grafts buried themselves in the ground of their own accord, and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... is sealed, or you should hear them tell The tale of their dim life, with all Its compost of experience: how the Sun Spreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude And those mild messages the Stars Descend in silver silences and ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... not war. I would have put a cordon of soldiers about that pathetic remnant of Napoleon's greatness and held it there to this good day rather than have plowed it down as a farmer plows jimson weeds into a pile of compost; but John Bull is not built that way—is impregnated with the chivalry of Baylor. Cambronne's reply is the only objectionable word in the entire work, and certain it might be pardoned in a scrap of history by people ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... This compost when cooked in a frying-pan is exceedingly rich and satisfying—not to say heavy—food, but it does not incommode such as La Certe and his wife. It even made the latter feel ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... rapid decomposition of vegetable matter, and, combining with the juices of the weeds and the salts of the dung, it drains evenly through the whole mass, forming a most perfect compost. The surplus moisture, upon reaching the bottom of the heap, drains from the slightly inclined platform into the receiving cistern, and is again pumped ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Pk. Edible.—The Agaricus subrufescens was described by Dr. Peck from specimens collected on a compost heap composed chiefly of leaves, at Glen Cove, Long Island. It occurs sometimes in greenhouses. In one case reported by Peck it appeared in soil prepared for forcing cucumbers in a greenhouse ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... conductor discharging its electric shocks, or a pile composed of many chemically-decomposing substances, or a light-engendering magnetic apparatus! In such a chasm lie buried thousands of years that compost the history of the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... rose, and was disgusted with Dr. Grill. He had the best place in the garden—warm, sunny, and sheltered; his holes were prepared with the tenderest care; he was given the most dainty mixture of compost, clay, and manure; he was watered assiduously all through the drought when more willing flowers got nothing; and he refused to do anything but look black and shrivel. He did not die, but neither did he live—he just existed; and at the end of the summer ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... life, but sweet content. When now the cock, the ploughman's horn, Calls forth the lily-wristed morn, Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go, Which though well-soil'd, yet thou dost know That the best compost for the lands Is the wise master's feet and hands. There at the plough thou find'st thy team, With a hind whistling there to them; And cheer'st them up by singing how The kingdom's portion is the plough. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... The demand from the cotton regions since the war has been enormous for the best artificial fertilizers, and the appreciation of the particular kind made by Walton, Whann & Co. is very marked. Planters have learned the fact, which science and experience demonstrate, that a reliable compost must be now used for the remunerative culture of cotton, as well as of their corn and other staples; and their preference for the superphosphate prepared by this firm over most other fertilizers is evinced by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... when with frightened bellowings it had come to a stop, it was bogged irretrievably. Madly it struggled, wildly it screamed and trumpeted. The harbour-water and the slime were churned into one stinking compost, and the golden castle in which we clung lurched so wildly that we were torn from it and shot far away into ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... entered the park by a stone bridge across the stream and by a ruinous gate, the gaps of which had been patched with furze faggots. The roadway itself was carpeted with last year's leaves from a coppice across the lane— leaves which the winter's rains had beaten into a black compost; and almost facing the side-gate was a stile whence a tangled footpath led ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of the old routes, there was a large advance in the value of real estate and in the amount of productions sent abroad. The use of Peruvian Guano and other concentrated fertilizers was just being introduced, and the example of Edgecombe county in the use of compost heaps was being followed in every direction and adding immensely to ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... with meats. But some will say, this variety breeds confusion, and makes that either we lose all or hold no more than the last. Why do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help it with marle, lime, and compost? plant hop gardens, prune trees, look to beehives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once? It is easier to do many things and continue, than to do ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... stakes in the course of the day. After the vines have been hoed around their roots they are secured to the stakes, and the tops are broken off at a shoot to prevent them from growing above the regulation height, which is ordinarily from 30 to 33 inches. They are liberally manured with a kind of compost formed of the loose friable soil dug out from the sides of the mountain, and of supposed volcanic origin, mixed with animal and vegetable refuse. The vines are shortened back while in flower, and in the course of the summer the ground is hoed a second and a third time, the object being, first, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... prevalence of blindness among horses. The manure should be cleaned out in the morning, at noon, and again at night. Use sawdust or straw liberally for bedding. It will absorb the urine, and as soon as foul, should be removed to the compost heap with the dung, where it will soon be ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various |
