"Compost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fertilization of cultivated fields and these contributions in the aggregate have been large. In China, in Korea and in Japan all but the inaccessible portions of their vast extent of mountain and hill lands have long been taxed to their full capacity for fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure and compost material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of all of the lumber used at home finds its way ultimately to the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... soul That not your trespass, but my 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 leave ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... unassimilated; but let him powder burnt bones there, and his crop uses it to golden advantage,—now merely the phosphate of lime, but material that has passed through the operations of animal life, of organism. With whatever manure he work his land, be it wood-ashes or guano or compost, he knows that that which has received the action of organic tissues fattens it the best; and so a wise man may fertilize to-day better with the facts of an experience that he has once lived through, than with any vague and unorganized dreams. But the fool has never lived;—life, said Bichat, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and are among the most useful bulbs for pot-culture. Plant from September to December, placing five or six bulbs in a 5-in. pot, and using a compost of loam, leaf-mould, and silver sand. Plunge the pots in ashes in a cold pit or frame, and keep them dry until the plants appear. When in full growth they may be removed to the conservatory, placing them near the glass, and giving careful attention to watering. For outdoor ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of their pots; their roots reduced and repotted into small pots in a light sandy loamy compost. Sow seeds, and also of any ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... A well-digested compost, formed of barnyard manure, loam and salt, makes the best fertilizer. Where this is not to be obtained, guano, superphosphate of lime, or bone-dust, may be employed advantageously as a substitute. Wood-ashes, raked or harrowed in just previous ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... fresh to what we begin; we are recreated with change as the stomach is with meats. But some will say, this variety breeds confusion, and makes that either we lose all or hold no more than the last. Why do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help it with marle, lime, and compost? plant hop gardens, prune trees, look to beehives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once? It is easier to do many things and continue, than to do ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... to have been employed in the establishment we are describing, for the fragment of a jaw-bone, with several teeth in it, was found in a room which seems to have been the stable; and the floor about the mill is paved with rough pieces of stone, while in the rest of the rooms it is made of stucco or compost. The use of water-mills, however, was not unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius describes their construction in terms not inapplicable to the mechanism of a common mill of the present day, and other ancient authors refer to them. "Set not your hands ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... children, he, found himself beginning to improve. In the mornings and evenings he cultivated his garden and his rood of potato-ground. He also collected with a wheelbarrow, which he borrowed, from an acquaintance, compost from the neighboring road; scoured an old drain before his door; dug rich earth, and tossed, it into the pool of rotten water beside the house, and in fact adopted several other modes of collecting manure. By this means he had, each spring, a large portion ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... asks the touch of taste. Here also grateful mixture of well-matched And sorted hues (each giving each relief, And by contrasted beauty shining more) Is needful. Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home, But elegance, chief grace the garden shows And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind. Without it, all is Gothic as the scene To which the insipid citizen resorts, Near yonder heath; where industry misspent, But proud ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... de 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 in the compost.[I] ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... if we accepted these gifts with more joy and gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular Antiquities." It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in it, and carrying it in state ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... the 24th day of June, 1732, all and every the goods, wares, and merchandises, and other commodities, carried and conveyed on the said River Ouse, above Wharfe mouth, except such manure, dung, compost, or lime only, as shall be water borne, and used and applied in tillage; and also except all timber, stone, and other materials, made use of in or about the works necessary for improving of the navigation of ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee
... light, we are not apt to wonder much at the prevalence of blindness among horses. The manure should be cleaned out in the morning, at noon, and again at night. Use sawdust or straw liberally for bedding. It will absorb the urine, and as soon as foul, should be removed to the compost heap with the dung, where it will soon be converted into fine, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... books ever since. Nothing has been done in German literature for which we have not a counterpart, done as well or better—except the work of Heine, and Heine was a Jew. His opinion of the Prussians was that they are a compost of beer, deceit, and sand. French literature and English literature can be compared, throughout their long course, sometimes to the great advantage of the French. German literature cannot seriously ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... 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
... some mounds around which were scattered butterflies' and grasshoppers' legs and wings, parts of frogs and toads, and the little pellets usually ejected by owls in the process of digestion. I also found that these mounds were invariably covered by an animal compost gathered from the surrounding prairie. I resolved to put my theory to the test by digging into one of these holes. Here the Indian boy was a great help, as he thoroughly knew his verb "to dig." I followed the hole down through hardpan to a ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... dung nor shepe to compost nor dung his land withall. Then let the husband take his ploughe, and cast al such landes three or four tymes togider, and make theyr rigge theyr as ye raine was before.... And so shel he finde new moulde, that was not sene in an hundred yeres before, the which must nedes ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... or flower the event abides. There is no heaven for the hopeful dead— No better haven than forgetful sod That smothers limbs and mouth and ears and eyes, And with those, love and permanence and strife And vanity and laughter that they thought was life, Making mere compost of the one who dies. To whose advantage? Nay, there is no God! But He, whose other name is Pitiful, was pleased By melting gentleness whose measures broke The ramps of ignorance and keeps of lust, Tumbling ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... superficial stratum in which praise and blame find their sphere of action,—the region of comparisons,—the habitat where envy and jealousy are to be looked for, if they have not been weeded out and flung into the compost-heap of dead vices, with which, if we understand moral husbandry, we fertilize our living virtues. It is quite foolish to abuse this thin upper layer of our mental soil. The grasses do not strike their roots deep in towards the centre, like the oaks, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Woman has fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings of lightning (Katha s.s. i. 147); she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind (169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in fear (170) and, like the fly, she quits camphor to settle on compost (ii. I7). "What dependence is there in the crowing of a hen?" (women's opinions) says the Hindi proverb; also "A virgin with grey hairs!" (i.e. a monster) and, "Wherever wendeth a fairy face a devil ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... manure, and thus add fifty per cent to the value of the whole. Open sheds protect from sun and rain, and they are emptied as often as is necessary, regardless of season, for I believe that the fields can care for manure better than a compost heap. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... majority of 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 scholarship has considered it necessary ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... eager to pronounce. Indeed, the critic of the volume is 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 are transformed into "something rich and strange" by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... [Sidenote: 182] It will but skin and filme the Vlcerous place, Whil'st ranke Corruption mining all within, [Sidenote: whiles] Infects vnseene, Confesse your selfe to Heauen, Repent what's past, auoyd what is to come, And do not spred the Compost or the Weedes, [Sidenote: compost on the] To make them ranke. Forgiue me this my Vertue, [Sidenote: ranker,] For in the fatnesse of this pursie[5] times, [Sidenote: these] Vertue it selfe, of Vice must pardon begge, Yea courb,[6] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... good rich soil about a foot deep, in the basement and board up the sides. Place the roots in it until the crowns are just covered, and about 2 inches apart, in rows 6 to 8 inches apart then place on top about 8 inches of any kind of light covering such as leaf mold or other light compost. This must be light or otherwise the heads which will grow from the crown will open out instead of keeping firmly closed and conically shaped. On the top of the light soil, manure (if it can be procured fresh, all the ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... to change into another kind. 1. The standing long and not being removed maketh them degenerate. 2. Drought unless the earth, of itself, be moist doth the like. 3. So doth removing into worse earth, or forbearing to compost the earth; as we see that water mint turneth into field mint, and the colewort ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... worships things under the earth. Dust he is, and to dust he shall return; (the sooner the better!) He prattles of potatoes, talks of turnips, harangues about horse-radish, knows no composition except compost. Speak to him of manners, and he will answer of manures. Like the Egyptians, he worships a bull; and has all the fondness of Pythagoras for beans. His only literature is Liebig's Animal Chemistry; his lighter reading, the Cultivator ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... really must except my own, for my face never looked anxious till I thought of marrying, or pale till I took to scribbling), the possessors of which were experiencing a little the torment of Tantalus. The palisades, those graves of sand, turned into a rich compost by the ever-recurring burial, were directly under the windows, and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, in palpable currents, through the jalousies, into the heated room; and, had one thrust his head into the moonlight and looked ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... thing should be managed. Well, as by this time he really appeared to have as much to say about the garden as any of us, what could I do but consent? First, then, with my assistance, he turned back the runners into the rows, and then had the spaces between covered with a thick coat of fine old compost, which he probably bought somewhere in the neighborhood,—but how much it cost we could never get him to say. Then he brought in a man with a plough, who broke up the ground, turning the manure thoroughly in, and then harrowing it until the surface was as finely pulverized ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... made compost heaps. Mixed dirt with manure. They hoed cotton and crops. They didn't know what school was. They helped with washing and ironing. Did every kind of work they had strength enough to do till they got big enough to go to the field. That was what the ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress. And also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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 cost ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... most rapid decomposition of vegetable matter, and, combining with the juices of the weeds and the salts of the dung, it drains evenly through the whole mass, forming a most perfect compost. The surplus moisture, upon reaching the bottom of the heap, drains from the slightly inclined platform into the receiving cistern, and is ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Mr. 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, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... to clothe and keep; I have my daily calls on every side, Churches remote and gleve and pasture wide, Great herds of breeding cattle, ghostly sheep— All to be watched and cared for, clipt and fed, Grain to be winnowed, compost to be spread;— Wanted all day in shippon and in stall, What time have I to serve ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... ground is hard, poor, and stony, the owner will find it to his advantage to dig a good-sized hole three or four feet across and two deep, filling in and around the tree with fine rich surface soil. If he can obtain some thoroughly decomposed compost or manure, for instance, as the scrapings of a barnyard, or rich black soil from an old pasture, to mix with the earth beneath and around the roots, the good effects will be seen speedily; but in no instance should raw manure from the stable, or anything ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Nurnberg 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 Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Dressing, Pruning, and Governing the Plantation; of the Ordering and Cultivating the Vine-yard after the first four years, till it needs renewing; as also of the manner and time, how and when to manure the Vine-yard, with Compost, will be better understood from the Book it self, than can be here described; the Author pretending, that, those few observations of his, as the native production of his own Experience, being practised with care, the Vine-yards in England may be planted, govern'd ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Behold this 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 on the apple-branches, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman |
