GARDENING NOTES.

Shannon News, 31 March 1925, Page 4

GARDENING NOTES.

Welcome showers have made the autumn garden work easy, and full advantage should be taken of favourable conditions. Dahlias are enjoying the extra moisture, makiug rapid growth and blooming freely. Chrysanthemums are rapidly pushing ahead and are showing signs of good bud development. Many growers anticipate an early blooming period, while others hold a reverse opinion. Sowing of sweet peas should not be delayed longer, if the best results are wanted. Make a point of sowing the pansy and viola seed this month, the plants will then bloom very early in the spring. The Vegetable Garden. In the vegetable garden make a sowing of onion seed, choosing early maturing varieties such as Giant Rocca and White Tripoli, while many gardeners favour Ailsa Craig. Sow lettuce seed, Webb’s Wonderful being one of the very best for autumn sowing, standing the frosts well, and a good flavoured crisp lettuce. Sow in beds or boxes, transplanting later into permanent quarters, always choosing a well drained position of the garden, and raise the beds, so that there is no danger of water lying around the plants. Seed sown at this period will provide this health.giving vegetable when it most needed and appreciated. Catalogues.

As drops of rain presage the shower, so the early catalogue gives us warning of the flood to follow. Of all literature, I must confess that the catalogue of the seedsmen, the florist and the nurseryman gives me the greatest pleasure, creating a longing in those who love gardens and gardening, to have a free .hand to order not only old favourites, sometimes forgotten until their names rise clearly out of the closely-printed lists, but the novelties which appear to increase in number year by year, and sufficient time and accommodation to grow them all. Many of these catalogues are more than mere lists of seeds and plants. Carefully compiled

beautifully printed and illustrated, they are works of art. deserving of & better fate than to be tossed contemptuously on one side. “Only a catalogue,” some may say, but it represents much painstaking care, and considerable expense. We cannot buy from every seedsman, but, in common courtesy, let us pay them the compliment of reading their catalogues. Among the novelties listed in some of the recent editions, which sound particularly attractive are giant.antirrhinums, which have immense flowers and attain a height of nearly five fett; foxgloves or digitalis, which produce spikes of bloom four feet in length with individual flowers of great size; rosa moyesii, a lovely single briar rose from China, producting large handsome blood red flowers with a central ring of golden anthers, followed by ornamental pear-shaped fruit with brilliant deep red colouring; salvia splendens (white pearly plants producing in abundance spikes of snowy white flowers); salvia new early dwarf, which can be brought into bloom ten weeks after sowing with flowers as large as salvia patens and of the same brilliant gentianblue; hollyhock “exquisite,” a new strain producing large flowers, with curled and fringed petals, each petal margined with white and blotched; a new miniature strain of dahlias which form compact bushes, and commence to flower when about a foot high and never exceed eighteen to twenty-four inches in height, with varied anemone shaped semi-double flowers, mostly showing two shades of colour in the on; flower; also a new strain named coltness hybrids forming bushes about one and a-half feet high, producing in long succession single flowers in many colours. Another novelty which should prove very attractive is solanum integrifoliurn, the tomato fruited solanum, a most decorative plant producing stems laden with deep scarlet fruit of tomato shape; and many others too numerous to mention. Classifying Exhibitors.

The Amateur—The Cottager—The ' Professional. The schedules for exhibitions o t horticultural produce literally bristle with difficulties, and when competition is keen, it is doubtful whether a single one has been published, or ever will be published, at which no objection can be levelled. Apart from the wording of the classes, there is the

division of the schedule into sections allocated to “the amateur”; “the cottager,” “he professional” and it is purposed to deal with this aspect ot the subject at the present juncture. An amateur is one who grows plants for the pleasure derivable therefrom, and not with a view to earning or making a prifit. This sounds easy and if the whole matter could be disposed of in such simple Language, we should all be contented. But for the purpose of contests on reasonably fair bases, it is imperative to delve deeper. There are amateurs (a) who

do the whole of their garden work themselves, (b) do most of the work themselves, but pay for unskilled labour occasionally to do the heaviest tasks, (c) who do pome of the work but pay for skilled professional ;gardeners’ labour regularly, but not continuously, (d) who do none of the work but pay for; skilled professional gardener labour continually. It is obvious that the man with a ten ; foot or twenty foot garden (group a) can. nor compete on terms proximating to equality with the man (group d), who employs continuously a staff of trained gardeners, who is an amateur nevertheless, because if all his gardening expenses are taken into consideration, it is certain that he is not making a profit. The only solution is sub-division, based on the groups set forth. The cottager is a manual worker (nominally). The line which divides the cottager from the amateur is however, no more real than the equatorial line or the North Pole. The general interpretation is that he must be a manual worker for a weekly wage, but he must not work regularly in the garden of an amateur. There,, should be a rule under which no man who has been trained or has at anytime earned his sole living as a professional gardener shall be permitted to compete against cottagei-s; also to bar those who are living on incomes or pension, and therefore able to devote their whole time to the cultiva-

tion of their soil shall be subject to

the same rule. The place for these is among the amateurs. A professional is one who follows a trade or proj fession for profit, i.e., a trained gardener who earns his living in the garden of an amateur or nurseryman, either as master or man. The professional gardener comes into the somewhdt paradoxical position of being unqualified for competition in some

classes and qualified in other classes, restricted to amateurs. Difficulties have sometimes occurred in placing the professional groom-gardener or chauffeur-gardener. The amateur regards him in the light of an interloper and will have none of him. There is one place only for him in the exhibition arena and it is with the professional gardeners who are staging produce which has been grown for their employers, or in a division reserved to professional gardeners. Neither should be permitted to compete in amateur or cottagers’ classes even if the produce has come from his own private garden. The position of the nurseryman needs no comment. If there is an “open to all” section then amateurs, cottagers,

and professionals alike enter, into competition, with no disputes, and frequently keen contests between exhibits are seen, and the professional gardener is by no means always the winner.