As I Hear . . . Your Asparagus Bed

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 13

As I Hear . . . Your Asparagus Bed

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J.B.E.S.)

'AN avid reader of the gardening notes in the papers. I have lately read more than one reference to the salting of asparagus beds. I was driven back to a favourite book, “The Skeptical Gardener,” by Humphrey John, which was in fact the pen-name of Professor Humphrey John Denham. He tells us that this salting nation is a heresy, derived from the belief that asparagus is a native of sand-dunes, near the seashore; whereas it flourishes in the sandy steppes of Russia and Poland—flourishes so vigorously as to kill out the grasses. So Humphrey John tells us that salt, being the worst of all fertilisers, making soil cold and wet and sticky, is needed by asparagus as a weedkiller—if at all; and I doubt if it works that way for our varieties. What does Humphrey John re-

commend? Suppose that you have based your bed on ground bones or fish-meal —and we all remember the basic formula of a few sheep carcases—then he recommends nitrogen, potash, and phosphate in proper balance or, if you can’t arrange that, then sodium nitrate and sulphate of potash. Does Humphrey John join in the chorus against “artificial” fertilisers? He does not. He tells you how to feed and cultivate your garden; then he says: As for the objections to chemical fertilisers, a fig for them. There is no evidence worth twopence that they pave the road to disease and premature decay, and the whole case against them is founded on sentimental prejudice, and a mistaken view of the position of the planet and of man himself on this tiny planet, spinning skew-wise round a minor star.

T expect to read again, when ± the sun works round, that I must must keep the hoe going, not only to keep the weeds down but to encourage moisture to flow up to the roots of the plants. The explanation is usually given that the water is moved up “by capillary attraction” through countless tiny tunnels or pipe-lines in the soil. I am assured that no such process goes on and that the soil is not perforated by these little channels. But if it were, it is surely obvious that a good hoeing could destroy them and cut the supposed percolation. Somebody began this piece of sham science, long ago, and writers of books and notes about gardening have kept it alive. Just as housewives, tending the sick, and aged, quote the old rule, “Feed a cold and starve a fever,” a very bad old rule and a silly one; for a cold is

a fever. But It does no great harm and makes a good excuse for hot buttered toast s-s t-s

T READ with interest in A “The Press” and elsewhere reports of views expressed at a Poetry School by Mr Louis Johnson, a wellknown poet, upon the sad this country. Young poets state of poets and poetry in should leave it, if they want to fulfil themselves. How can poetry be written in a passionless society? I don’t know, unless it is by poets. Whoever and wherever the young ones are, I would advise them to ignore Mr Johnson’s advice. If they export themselves and their typewriters and their poetic seed-packets, hoping to find a county and a climate more congenial, I think they will be disappointed. The seeds will not grow any better in Alabama or Kent or Normandy than in Central

Otago or North Auckland. As for the young poets’ seniors, I think that some of them talk too much and too solemnly about their trade. I used to play tennis with a man given to stopping the game while he corrected his footwork, practised his swing, and lectured. One evening a very good player, who was coaching us, interrupted such a performance. “Billy,” he said, “cut out all this stuff. Just concentrate on smiting the pill.” Sound doctrine for poets, too.

ATENTION of the rumpus in ’ x Perth, Western Australia, over the purchase by the Art Gallery Society of a piece of “junk” sculpture leads me to the question of art gallery purchasing. Decisions must be made, from time to time, by the authorities of the day. They are as likely to decide

badly, In time’s slow judgment, as well. Their greatest danger, I fear, is that they may decide on local or personal grounds as well as on uncertain aesthetic ones. Is not this the sure way to fill their walls with pictures of trivial and passing value and in the end to fill their basements or their attics with discards? I am told that the basements of the Tate are so loaded. It would not startle me if I were told that the basements of the McDougall Gallery, in Christchurch, or the National Gallery, in Wellington, were so stacked, or ought to be. Upon every occasion, the buyers take a chance. My own guess is that, being well grounded in the tradition of art, they should be bold rather than timid. Their failures will be buried; their successes will distinguish them and their galleries.