"Compost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 corner pillar, with its ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... his very helplessness made a fever in his soul. Dandy as he was, he was 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 ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... 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 wun of Mr Ward's, by the way; it ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... two or three trips with the dingui, back and forth, to transfer some of it to the crater. After all his toil and trouble, the worthy fellow did not get more than a hogshead full of this new material, but Mark thought it well worth while to haul it up, and to endeavour to mix it with his compost. This was done by making it up in bundles, as one would roll up hay, of a size that ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 when such plants are grown. So treated, it is likely to give trouble, because, having utilized ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... little extraordinary care in its culture; its roots 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
... and thoroughly pulverizing the native soil, we added a top layer of foreign soil as a fertilizer. The latter came from a compost heap of street sweepings which had been standing two years and was supposed to be nutritious. As it turned out, however, this soil contained little nutriment and was productive of more fine weeds than fine vegetables, and it required much labor to ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... if possible, but thin out the small branches. If the trees are old and bark-bound, scrape off the roughest bark and wash the bodies and large limbs with whale-oil soap, or soft-soap such as the farmers make, putting it on quite thick. Give the ground plenty of compost manure, bone-dust, ashes, and salt. The best and most convenient preparation for covering wounds is gum-shellac dissolved in alcohol to the thickness of paint, and put on with a brush.' The last is from Mr. Patrick ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... especially if one has herbaceous borders, roses, and other plants that need a mulch. When the leaves are taken off the borders in the spring, they should be piled with the manure or other refuse and there allowed to pass into compost ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... light, sandy soil suits watermelons best. They can be grown on very poor soil if a good supply of compost be placed in each hill. The land for the melons should be laid off in about ten-foot checks; that is, the furrows should cross one another at right angles about every ten feet. A wide hole should be dug where the ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Nuernberg 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 a dead grammatical cinder? The ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... poisonous dross to the Abbey he founded. I am required to lend it in Frankfort, upon undoubted security and suitable usury, that it may stimulate and fertilize the commerce of the land, much as the contents of a compost heap, disagreeable in the senses, and defiling to him who handles it, when spread upon the fields results in the production of flower, fruit, and food, giving fragrance, delight, and sustenance to the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... mentioned government mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungus, unwholesome growths that a petty, in-doors ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... soil costs the 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
... they had got that far, and debated the Idea in detail, and with amendment and resolve, it very greatly concerned them of what so admirable a compost should be mixed. Some said of this, and some said of that, but in the long run it was decided by the narrow majority of eight in a full house that Nothing was the only proper material out of which to make this World of theirs, and out of Nothing they made ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Craig in honour, as a man who "knew his business" and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he was less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said in confidence to her husband, "You're mighty fond o' Craig, but for my part, I think he's welly like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' purpose to hear him crow." For the rest, Mr. Craig was ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and weeds of all kinds. It was ploughed up and hastily picked over, for the season was so unfavourable for cleaning the land (from the great quantity of rain that fell) that I was almost induced to abandon the experiment. Previously to sowing the seed, one-fourth of the field was manured with a compost of night-soil and coal-ashes, at the rate of forty tons to the customary acre (7840 yards); the remaining three-fourths having the seed put in without any manure whatever. The winter was very unfavourable for the plants in our cold wet soil, and in ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... from the 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 ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... 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 ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... of the east front. The theatre for lectures on surgery and medicine will accommodate 150 students. Immediately adjoining it is the museum of anatomical preparations. The entire edifice is faced with compost, coloured and checkered in imitation of stone. The hospital, when complete, will contain 29 wards, and 460 beds. The contracts for building the whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... wiped 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
... times,—and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,—she gave a nod to Nature:—'twas enough,—Nature threw half a spadeful of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in {77} it as to retain the forms of angles and indenting,—and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... what are called the organic elements of wheat (the combustible part) there are seven times more nitrogen in 100 pounds than in a like weight of straw. Hence, if the farmer converts straw into manure or compost, with the view ultimately of transforming it into wheat, it will take 7 pounds of straw to yield nitrogen enough to form one pound of wheat. Few are aware how much labor and money is annually lost by the feeding of plants on food not strictly adapted to the peculiar wants of nature in ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... 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
... of the leather-dressers who prepared the leather for the binder, in 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 duplicates, several of which ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... 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
... others' larger grounds: For well thou know'st, 'tis not the extent Of land makes 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. This done, then to th' enamell'd meads, Thou go'st; and as thy foot there treads, Thou seest ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... like to talk 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 no biddy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the confessed culprit would go towards the apartment of the holy inquisitor; but in the act of setting foot at its entrance, the trap opened, and the world of the living heard no more of him. I examined some of the earth found in the pit below this trap; it was a compost of common earth, rottenness, ashes, and human hair, fetid to the smell, and horrible to the sight and to ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... 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
... 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 of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... somewhat puzzled to harmonize the fine rhythm of the periods, and the superb propriety of the tone, with the subject-matter. The bleakest and most ghastly aspects of Nature,—the most prosaic facts of the farmer's life,—Irish servants and compost-heaps,—cows which try to consume their own milk,—beehives which send forth swarms to sting the children of the house, and give no honey,—soils which refuse to bear the products which intelligence has anticipated,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... 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 flowering bulb looks so well when ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... 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 ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... area that was in corn, plow it deeply in October, and if he detects traces of the white grub, cross-plow it again just as the ground is beginning to freeze. Early in the spring he can cover the surface with some fertilizer—there is nothing better than a rotted compost of muck and barn-yard manure—at the proportion of forty or fifty tons to the acre. Plow and cross-plow again, and in each instance let the first team be followed by a subsoil or lifting plow, which stirs and loosens the substratum without bringing it to the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... 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 parts of this ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... 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 ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... mode of increasing the different sorts is by cuttings, no plant growing more readily by this mode. These should be taken off at a joint where the wood is ripening, at which point the root fibres are formed, and put into a pot with a compost of one part garden mould, one part vegetable mould, and one part sand, and then kept moderately moist, in the shade, until they have formed strong root fibres, when they may be planted out. The best method is to plant each cutting in a separate pot of the smallest size. The germinating of the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson |
