FARM AND GARDENING

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 3 April 1914, Page 6

FARM AND GARDENING

APRIL

[Corresponding with October in Great Britain]

Kitchen Garie.v. — Continue to plant cabbage, Savoy, celery, leeks, and lettuce for succession. Tie up a few endive and lettuce every fortnight to blanch. Mustard, cress, raddish, and prickly spinach sow according to requirements. Carrots and turnips, sow for winter and spring use. Sow cabbage and cauliflower. Onions, thin. Give a liberal supply of manure water to celery previous t% moulding up. Mould up cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, etc. Attend to gathering fruit of egg-plant and chilies. Pumpkins and pie-melons, gather and store away in a dry, airy place. Cucumbers, rock and watermelons will be over for the season. Clear away the old vines, and have the ground thoroughly dug or trenched if necessary, and manured, in readir ness for cropping. Attend to gathering all crops as they come to maturity, especially onions and late-planted potatoes. Clear away all rubbish, a» it not only looks unsightly, but forms a harbour for insects. Dig and trench all vacant ground. Sow with oats oi mustard any land not intended for cropping until spring. Flowiir Garden. • -All annuals past flowering should be cleared off. Sow a few hardy kinds of early flowering. Lift layers of carnations t etc., and plant either ■in a bed together or where intended to remain. Plant out antirrhinums, pansies penstemons, etc. Plant the main stock of anemones, hyacinths, irises, narcissi, tulips, crocuses, etc., for early flowering The foliage of all perennial plants should be cut away as it decays, and all plants ought to be marked or labelled to indicate their -whereabouts. Spaces will be left through lifting tender plants and the decay of others ; a few hyacinths, tulips, ixias, etc., can be put in to fill their places, and they, in their turn, can be removed when they have done flowering to make room for the border plants for another season. Let the border have a good bed and dressing of manure, and dig or trench it in at the same time. See that the whereabouts of all summer bulbs and tubers is properly marked. TnE Oi-ciiabd. —All digging aud trenching of ground intended for a new or an extension of an old orchard should be finished this month. Remove raspberry suckers that are not wanted, and make strawberry plantations if not done last month, Tie up trees and long shoots against ap proaching winter winds; remove tendrils and laterals from vines. Continue to collect apples and other fruit as they become fit to pull, Handle them gently, and mark the good and inferior sorts that you may cut back the latter and graft with the former. Late keeping pears and apples should be stored where the exhalations from the earlier ripening sorts will not reach them. Air may be admitted when the outside temperature is about equal to that inside the fruit-house. When air warmer than that inside the fruit- room is admitted, it causes nioisture to gather on the fruit, which has ihe effect of making it mould and rot. Gooseberries and currants, mny be propagated by cuttings towards the end of the month. Take care to remove all buds from the lower part of gooseberry cutting-s as high as three inches above the depth they are inserted in the soil. Look well to your figs that they become not over-ripe, and your grapes, and if you want a bunch of the latter to keep fresh for a while, cut it with a little of the wood. Cape gooseberries require looking after ; gather the fruit before it falls off, and spread out to dry before husking. Look well to all drains and water-courses of eveiy kind, wet weather is fast approaching. Farm. —Finish sowing all grasses as early as possible in the month. . This is a good month to sow' Algerian oats ; two bushels seed to the acre sown now will give good results, and will allow being fed off once or twice before shutting for crop. Then oats may be sown from now till September. Ewes to rams this month will lamb in September. Lift all potatoes, and if not sold immediately put into good pits. Now that the blight is here, it is advisable to keep in the bags for a shortitime. and ve-piok before pitting. Clean out drains and water-courses.