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.

Abuses in Hilling

SOme observe no time, and some no measure in making their hills, but (having heard say, that hills are necessary) they make hills once for all, and never after pluck down the same: but better it were to make no hill, than so to do, for after the first year it doth derogate, and not adde any com∣fort to the root, except the same be every year new made and dressed, &c.

Some use to break off the tops of the Hops when they are grown a xi. or xii. foot high, because thereby they burnish and stock exceedingly, wherein, though I cannot commend their doings, yet do they much better than such as will have their Poles as long as their Hops.

But if your Pole be very long, and that the Hop have not attained to the top thereof before the middest of July, you shall do well then to break, or cut off the top of the same Hop, for so shall the residue of the growing time serve to the

maintenance and increase of the Branches, which otherwise would expire without doing good in that matter, because that whole time would be then imployed to the lengthening of the stalk which little prevaileth (I say) to the stocking or encrease of the Hop.

And here is to be noted, that many covetous men, thinking (in hast) to enlarge their luere, do find (at leisure) their com∣modity diminished, whilst they make their hills too thick, their Poles too long, and suffer too many stalks to grow up∣on one Pole, wherein (I say) while they run away flattering themselves with the imagination of double gains, they are o∣vertaken with trebble dammage (that is to say) with the losse of their time, their labour, and their cost.