£IOOO A BUNCH.
A prize of £IOOO offered by the London Daily Mail for the best bunch of sweet peas was won by Mrs Fraser, wife of the Rev. D. D. Fraser, of Spronston.. Kelso, while Mr Fraser himself was awarded *he third prize of £IOO. The success of these amateur growers in a contest that drew some 45,000 entries from ail parts of Britain was very remarkable but Mr Fraser quite frankly explained his methods when he was asked by a representative of the enterprising London newspaper to tell its readers just "how it was done." He and his wife had devoted to their sweet peas the care and attention that other people are in the habit of giving to rare orchids. They selected a sunny, sheltered spot where the drainage was good, and had excavated a trench three feet deep, six feet wide and sixty feet, long. The bottom of this trench they lined thickly with decayed leaves and the fi ling was continued with a mixture of soil and various manures, the proportion of the ingredients being nicely calculated in accordance with the advice given in handbooks on sweet-pea culture. Some ordinary 9tabie manure was used, but it was kept a foot below the surface. A little lime was placed on the top when the trench had been filled and a dusting of superphosphate was given jsut before the plants were put out. Some of the seeds had been sown in boxes in September, but the main sowing took place in January, corresponding to July in New Zealand. The seeds were started in pots in a hot-bed, gradually hardened and planted out in March. Mr and Mrs Fraser had selected the varieties after an anxious study of the catalogues of the leading dealers and a comparison of the prize lists of the more important shows. No water was given until the plants began to flower in June. Then they were mulched with stable manure and wel 1 watered, and in the succeeding weeks applications of soot and of a special sweet-pea manure were given alternately with an abundance of water. The result was an extraordinary display of big biooms and vivid colourings. The judges, when they were awarding the prizes, had no knowledge of the fact that the first prize and the third nrize were going to the same garden.
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King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 399, 27 September 1911, Page 3
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393£1000 A BUNCH. King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 399, 27 September 1911, Page 3
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