The country-mans recreation, or The art of [brace] planting, graffing, and gardening, [brace] in three books. The first declaring divers waies of planting, and graffing, and the best times of the year, with divers commodities and secrets herein, how to set or plant with the root, and without the root; to sow or set pepins or curnels, with the ordering thereof, also to cleanse your grafts and cions, to help barren and sick trees, to kill worms and vermin, and to preserve and keep fruit; how to plant and proin your vines, and to gather and presse your grape; to cleanse and mosse your trees, to make your cider and perry, with many other secret practises which shall appear in the table following. The second treateth of the hop-garden, with necessary instructions for the making and maintenance thereof, ... with some directions for tabaco. Whereunto is added, The expert gardener, containing divers necessary and rare secrets belonging to that art, ... hereunto is likewise added the Art of angling.

The setting of Chesnuts.

THe Chesnut-tree men do use to plant like unto the Fig-tree. They may be both planted and graffed well, they wax well in fresh and fat earth, for in Sand they like not. If ye will set the Curnells, ye shall lay them in water untill they do sink, and those that do sink to the bottome of the water be best to set, which ye shall set in the Moneth of November, and December, foure fingers deep, a foot one from another, for when they be in these two Moneths Set or Planted, they shall endure long, and bear also good fruit, yet some there be that Plant or Set them first in dung like Beans, which will be sweeter than the other sort, but those which be set in these two Moneths aforesaid, shall first bear their fruit, men may prove which is best, experience doth teach.

This is another way to prove and know, which Chesnuts be best to plant or set, that is, ye shall take a quantity of nuts,

then lay them in Sand the space of thirty dayes, then take and wash them in water fair and clean, and throw them into water again, and those which do sink to the bottome, are good to plant or set, and the other that swim are naught; thus may ye do with all other Curnels or nuts.