Farm and Garden.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 48, 23 December 1871, Page 6

Farm and Garden.

ESSENTIAL TO GOOD DAIRYING. No man need expect to succeed in the dairy business unless well provided with good shelter for his cows, as weil as with the proper grasses and water, and accommodation for milking, feeding, and whatever else appertains to the conveniences and labor connected with it. It may be well to enumerate a few of these items, which are here offered for consideration. Ist. Permanent blue grass and white clover pastures on dry, elevated soil, or their equivalent in other grasses or herbage, enabling the cows to give abundance of rich good flavored milk. Common prairie and lowland grasses will not answer. 2nd. Abundance of pure water supplied by living springs, running brooks, or permanent rills. Ponds of stagnant water are not. healthy for dairy cows, and will not aid in making a high flavored cheese or butter. 3rd. Barn, stables or sheds into which the cows may be driven in excessive heats or cold storms for shelter, as all excessive temperatures, whether of heat or cold, or drought or moisture, affect the milk both in quality as well as quantity,, and influence, more or less, the qualify ag well as the quantity of the dairy products. 4th. Quietude of the cows, continually, whether at pastures, in the yards or stables, together with gentleness in their treatment, and a continuous loveable care of them, so that they repose entire confidence in those who go among, care for, or handle them. sth. Plenty of salt once a week to keep their bowels open, and their appetites good. 6th. Steady milkers : the same milkers to the same cows, continuously as may be possible so that cows get accustomed to those who draw their milk. The cow is a very sensitive animal. 7th. Perfect cleanliness in the vessels which receive the milk, and clean hands to the milker. For these purposes a bucket of water, washbowls, and soft linen or cotton cloth to wipe off the udders, should always be in attendance. Bth. In addition to all these requisites, when a prolonged drought dries the pastures, green crops of grass, small grains of vetches, should be sown in the spring, to help out the pasture grasses, and keep up the flow of milk. For the want of these, oftentimes half the dairy products of the season are lost. Their food should be daily cut, and fed to the cows in clean mangers.

THE ARTISANS’ GARDENS AROUND NOTTINGHAM. Your admirable description of these gardens my.de me anxious to visit them. Consequently I was up with the lark on the last morning of the show (Sat urday, July 1), and on the road to the Hunger Hiils, the head quarters of the St Ann’s Horticultural Society. Towards six o’clock I found several of the gardeners at work, and from one and all of them received a hearty welcome. Although it was the morning of their great show in connection with the jKoyal Horticultural Society, and all of them were engaged in cutting and arranging their show roses, they were most kind and courteous, showing me the flowers they intended to take to the show with the utmost openness and frankness. I can safely say that I never saw such Roses before. Nearly the whole of the plants were dwarfs. To my inquiry, “ On

their own roots?” “Yes, now,” was the answer. I found the practice was to graft or bud very low on the manetti, bury the point of union an inch or two deep, and thus induce the scion to root on its own account. The manetti was looked upon as a short cut to rapid increase of choice varieties ; but the best blooms were almost invariably cut from plants on their own roots. The foliage was even more extraordinary than the flowers, so large, green, and glossy, without spot. Doubtless, a powerful aid to this perfection of leaf and flower is given by the multiplicity of hedges that surround and subdivide these gardens in all directions ; these average from six to seven feet in height, and tower far above the dwarf, or indeed any standard roses seen here ; hence the stiff breetes that play around the outskirts are fiued down into zephyrs—like gentleness before they reach the roses. Almost each favorite flower again has its little roof of sloping pasteboard tocoverits beaufy from the midday sun’s broad glare, and to pitch all heavy rains clean over it, so that the roses are neither tarnished by friction, their beauty burnt out by the fierce sun, nor their purity spotted with big drops of rain pattering heavy upon their delicate petals. These, growers take marvellous care of their favorites, they have a keen eye for insects and are adepts in the use of shelter ; their skill is likewise very special and particular, they know the peculiarity of each rose, and can time its swelling or opening buds to a day or hour almost. Their affection for their, flowers are unbounded, and the roses seem to respond to their gentle and loving touch. Is the weather dry—they water or dew their roses, the latter by a peculiar process, new to me, which it would be hardly safe to indulge in unless for show roses. Clean water is taken into the mouth and blown out upon the roses in an invisible stream of the finest dew, so like nature’s own, that it would take au expert in such matters to tell the difference. It is quite thrilling to see how gently and looingly hard handed mechanics handle their roses. They cut them affectionately, set them up tenderly, and the roses respond by displaying their full beauty. It is impossible to estimate the effects of this passionate attachment to roses and other flowers upon character. It softens, refines, elevates, gladdens. On the early morning of Saturday I met a veritable looking Nottingham “lamb” the only one I saw. He was a powerful, illlooking man ; but I noticed he carried a handful of roses. When we met I congratulated him on their sweetness and then beauty. His whole face lighted up instantly ; in fact it was transformed as I smelt his roses, and he told me where much better were to be seen, grown by others. These were only taken home, not for the show. Surely these roses, dripping with dew and bathed in sweetness, were veritable messengers of light, laden with blessings to that poor (and he looked very poor) man’s home. But these town gardeners put more into thoir gardens than love and skill. They have boundless faith in manure- The gardens average 400 square yards, and one of these gardeners told me that he generally bought from four to five tons of manure every year ! Four to five tons of manure ou 400 yards, that would satisfy Mr Mechi! All the crops grow, as it were, in dung ; r -the roots find dung above, dung below, dung wherever they go. The consequence is that everything, whether it be pears, potatoes, leaves, flowers or fruits, are as near perfect as may be. In some of the gardens the-goose-berries seemed to be as great a favorite as the rose. The largest Lancashire sorts are grown as cordons within four and six inches- of the ground. A few tall peas or other vegetables are allowed to grow over them, for a partial shade. The surface is mulched with strong muck, the fruit thinned and where two very large ones grow close together, they are tied apart by threads attached to their corolla, or nose, as they call it. It is thus that the prize gooseberries are developed into such monstrous prodigies of juicy sweetness. How all this perfection of culture is reached on the Hunger Hills —a piece of poor,comparitively worthless, sandy soils, that a few years ago would not have paid for labor and seed. It would do the farmers as well as the gardeners of Britain good to spend a day amid these gardens. If any one wants to know what the earth, will bring forth when man feeds it well, attends, it lovingly and skillfully, let him go to the Hunger Hills around Net ingham—mark, learn and inwardly digest the full purport of all he sees and hears there. He will be sure of a hearty welcome from the enthusiastic horticulturists that he will find there swarming like bees. However wise and clever he may been before, he will return a wiser, and, if he reads his lesson aright, a happier, ay, and a better man. This passion, and it is nothing less, of the artizan for gardening is one of the most hopeful signs of the times, and deserves the earnest attention of social reformers and statesmen, and, indeed, of all who care to see the world grow wiser, happier, and better. Then absorbed in such pleasing and engrossing pursuits are like seats ticketed with the words “ engaged.” They have no room and less time for vice, and it turns aside to find other victims. Were -afi equally well employed, it would find it difficult to entrap any, Every one ought to be able to find a fragment of Eden then in his home and garden, and fewer would roam after forbidden pleasures. Gardens for the million really mean, in the end, virtue, yes, and I will add, godliners for the million.