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.

To gather your Cions.

ALso such Cions or Graffs, which you get on other trees, the young Trees of three, four, five or six years growth are best to take graffs. Take them of no under boughs, but in the top on the East side, if ye can, and the fairest and greatest. Ye shall cut them two inches long of the old wood beneath the joynt. And when you graff, cut them taper-wise from the joynt two inches or more of length, which set into the stock, and before you set it in, open your stock with a wedg of Iron or hard wood softly; then if the sides of your clefts be rag∣ged, pare them on both sides with the point of a sharp knife within and above, then set in your graffes close on the out∣sides, and also above, but let your stock be as little while o∣pen as ye can, and when your graffs be well set in, pluck out your wedge, and if your stocks do pinch your graffs much, then ye must put in a wedge of the same wood to help your graffs: then lay a thick bark or peel over the cleft from the one graff to the other, to keep out the clay and rain, and clay them two fingers thick round about the clefts, then lay on mosse, but wool is better next your clay, or temper your clay with wool or hair, for it will abide closer and stronger on the stock head, some take wool next the clay, and wrap it all over with linnen cloths, for the wool being once moist will keep the clay so a long time. Others take woollen clouts, that have been laid in the juyce of Worm-wood or such like bitter thing, to keep creeping worms from coming under to the graffs. If ye graff or plant in the Winter, put your clay uppermost, for Summer your Mosse. For in Winter the Mosse is warme, and your clay will not cleave. In Summer

your clay is cold, and your Mosse keeps him from cleaving or chapping. To bind them take Willow peels, cloven B••y∣ars, Oziars and such like. To gather your graffe on the East part, of the Tree is counted best; if ye gather them below on the under-boughs, they will grow flaggie and spreading a∣broad: If ye take them in the top of the Tree, they will grow upright. Yet some doe gather their Cions or graffes on the sides of the Trees, and so graffe them againe on the like sides of the stocks, which by some men is not counted so good for fruit. It is not good to graff a great stocke, for they will be long ere they cover the head thereof.