The country-mans recreation, or the art of planting, graffing, and gardening in three bookes. The first declaring divers wayes of planting, and graffing ... also how to cleanse your grafts and cions, how to helpe barren and sicke trees, how to kill wormes and vermin and to preserve and keepe fruit, how to plant and proyne your vines, and to gather and presse your grape ... how to make your cider and perry ... The second treateth of the hop-garden, with necessary instructions for the making and the maintenance thereof ... Whereunto is added, the expert gardener, containing divers necessary and rare secrets belonging to that art ...

Of Hilling and Hills.

NOw you must begin to make your Hills, and for the better doing thereof, you must prepare a toole of Iron fashioned somewhat like to a Coopers Addes, but not

so much bowing, neither so narrow at the head, and therefore likest to the nether part of a shovell, the powle whereof must be made with a round hole to receive a helve, like to the helve of a Mattock, and in the powle also a naile hole must be made, to fasten it to the helve.

This helve should bow somewhat like to a Sithe, or to the steale of a Sithe, and it must be little more then a yard long.

[illustration] cutting and digging tool, similar to a cooper's adze, hoe, mattock or brush hook

With this toole you may pare away the Grasse which groweth in the spaces betwixt the hills, and with the same also you may raise your hills, and pull them downe when time requireth.

Some thinke it impertinent and not necessary to make hills the first yeare, partly because their distrust of this yeares pro∣fite quallifieth their diligence in this behalfe, and partly for that they thinke that the principall roote prospereth best, when there be no new rootes of them forced and maintained. But experience confuteth both these conjectures, for by indu∣stry, the first yeares profit will be great, and thereby also the principall sets much amended, as their prosperity in the second yeare will plainely declare.

But in this worke you must be both painefull and curious, as wherein consisteth the hope of your gaines, and the successe of your worke. For the greater in quantity you make your hills, the more in number you shall have of your Hops, and the fewer weeds you shall have on your ground, the more Hops you shall have upon your Poles.

In consideration whereof I say, your labour must be con∣tinuall from this time almost till the time of gathering, in raising your hills and clearing ground from weeds.

In the first yeare that you plant your Hop garden, sup∣presse not one science, but suffer them all to clime up to the Poles, for if you should bury or cover all the springs of any one of your three rootes, which you did lately set, the roote thereof perisheth, and perhaps out of some one roote there

will not proceed above one or two springs, which being bu∣ried, that roote I say dyeth, and therefore the more poles are at this time requisite.

After the first yeare you must not suffer above two or three stalkes at the most to grow up to one Pole, but put downe and bury all the rest.

Howbeit, you may let them all grow till they be foure or five foot high at the least, whereby you shall make the better choice of them which you meane to attaine, whereby also the principall roote will be the better, &c.

Some suffer their Hops to clime up to the tops of the Poles, and then make the hills at one instant in such quantity as they meane to leave them, which is neither the best nor the second way.

But if (for expedition) you be driven hereunto, begin soo∣ner (that is to say) when the Hops be foure or five foot long, and afterwards if leisure shall serve, refresh them againe with more earth.

But to make them well, and as they ought to be made, you must immediately after your poles are set, make a little banke or circle round about the outside of them, as a mention how wide your hill shall be, and as a receptacle to retaine and keepe moisture, whereof there cannot lightly come too much, so it come from above.

Jf your Garden be great, by that time that you have made an end of these circles or bankes, it will be time to proceed further towards the building up of your hills.

Now therefore returne againe to the place where you be∣gan, or else where you see the Hops highest, and with your toole pare off the uppermost earth from the Allies or spaces betweene the hills, and lay the same in your Hops, upon and within the circle that you made before, alwayes leaving the same highest of any part of the hill, and so passe through your Garden againe and againe, till you have raised your hills by little and little, to so great a quantity as is before de∣clared, and looke how high your hill is, so long are your new

rootes, and the greater your new rootes or springs be, the more larger and better your Hops will be.

Great and overgrowne weeds should not be laid upon the hills, as to raise them to their due quantity, but when with diligence and expedition you passe through your Garden, continually paring away each greene thing assoone as it ap∣peareth, you shall doe well, with the same, and the uppermost mould of your Garden together, to maintaine and encrease the substance of your hills, even till they be almost a yard high.

In the first yeare nake not your hill too rath, least in the do∣ing thereof you oppresse some of those springs which would otherwise have appeared out of the ground.

It shall not be amisse now and then to passe through your Garden, having in each hand a forked wand, directing aright such Hops as decline from the poles, but some in stead of the said forked wands, use to stand upon a stoole, and doe it with their hands.

Notes

• The helve hereof should be straight at the upper end.