HOME GARDENS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 85, 13 January 1950, Page 3

HOME GARDENS

(By J. S. Yeates, Massey Agricultural College) CUTTINGS AND “SLIPS” From now onwards during the summer and autumn most gardeners grow various plants from cuttings. This sort of thing makes a most fascinating hobby, in addition to producing some new plants for j the garden. j For convenience, cuttings are classified commonly as either hardwood or soft-wood cuttings. This is a very inaccurate means of describing them but in a general way describes most common cuttings. The hardwood cuttings are those of hard, firm, wood and are nearly all taken in the autumn or winter when the leaves are dropped. They are planted out of doors, as described recently for gooseberries. Provided the climate is sufficiently moist, many plants which do not drop their leaves can also be grown out of doors as hardwood cuttings. Many of our common hedge plants such as lpnicera, escallonia, phebalium and seedless barberry are examples. Some of the deciduous plants commonly grown from hardwood cuttings are: Poplars and willows, currants and gooseberries, some of the plums like the Kitchener plum, forsythia, japonica, spindlebei’ry, fuchsia. The so-called soft wood cuttings may be either of herbaceous plants like carnations, calceolarias, or phlox, or the soft young shoots of woody plants like baronia, manuka, veronica, fucshia, evergreen, azalea, and many of the rhododendrons with small leaves. It is surprising what can be rooted by anyone who is sufficiently interested and painstaking to try. Start with something fairly easy, like carnations and you will soon find yourself trying more difficult cuttings. The success or failure of any attempt to root leafy cuttings, depends mainly on preventing them i from drying out from the leaves. | The “softer” a cutting is the more i easily do the leaves droop from loss of moisture. The first requirement is to plant them somewhere where the air is moist. A garden frame is one'of the best means of doing this. I have used very successfully ' deep boxes, the size of a kerosene case on its side, with a sheet of glass fitting closely over the opening. Keep this box in a shady spo' 1 where it gets good daylight but little or no direct sun. Another trick is to dig a hole in the ground in a fairly shady place, knock both top and bottom out of. such a box, and fit it closely into the ground, just flush with the level of the soil. In each case put about three inches of good? coarse clean river sand (not beach sand) in the bottom. Hormoneous will of course be in most peoples’ minds when cuttings are mentioned. The materials if rightly used are of considerable value in producing more roots or producing them more quickly than on untreated cuttings. But they do not make it possible to root cuttings which cannot be rooted without them. The things which root most easily in any case, like carnations, show the greatest gain from use of hormones. Some plants are harmed by one sort of hormone, but helped in rooting by another compound. , If you are going away at all you should already have put the garden into shape so that it will carry on while you are away. A careful job of weeding is very well worth while. Tiny seedling weeds which you need to look for now can become very big ones in a couple of weeks at this season. It is wise to hoe all the ground which can be hoed, to kill young weeds, and also to leave a loose dry surface layer. I do not mean a deep hoeing, but what can be called a “scuffling.” If you hose any beds this loosening of the surface a day or so later will prevent the ground from caking on the surface and then cracking. Where you cannot hoe, as amongst young seedlings, hand-weed the small weeds out carefully. If you do not do this, the weeds may well overtop the young plants during your absence. The difficulty then ir not only drawn-up plants, but the damage you do in pulling out big weeds from amongst them.