PLANTING OUT STOCKS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 329, 14 April 1928, Page 26

PLANTING OUT STOCKS

Many failures occur with the early flowering stocks, and gardeners are continually complaining about their plants dying off without cause. The main thing in growing good stocks is a sunny, airy position and a well-drained, free soil. They cannot stand an excess of wet, and half the failures in growing stocks can be put down to excessively wet spells and indifferently drained soils; once the plants are thoroughly checked by excessive wet at the roots they become diseased and failure is then certain. The only way to combat this is to plant them in a very open, sunny, w r ell-drained bed. A fine bed of stocks can be absolutely ruined by a too free use of the sprinkler in a drought season. All stock seed will produce a fair proportion of single flowers. The very best strains, however, willgive nearly 70 per cent, of doubles if every plant is put out, but if only the strong and earlier plants in the seed beds are used, the proportion of doubles may be increased to 80 per cent. When this is done all the weaker and later plants should be rejected.

As -with most garden plants, the more select and choice the strain the more expensive it is to produce the seeds; the double flowers do not seed and the greater the proportion of them the less the yield. It is therefore essential to secure your stock seed from a reliable source, and do not under any circumstances use cheap seed.