IN THE GARDEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1938, Page 5

IN THE GARDEN

HINTS FOR THE AMATEUR.

VEGETABLES AND FLOWERS. WORK FOR THE WEEK VEGETABLE GARDEN. Prepare new Asparagus beds. Thorough and deep trenching is necessary for success. Prepare empty plots for sowing or planting in winter and spring crops. Sow Shorthorn Carrots, Turnip-rooted Beet, Yelllow and White Turnips. Put in a few plants of Silver Beet and Perpetual Spinach. Plant out Cabbage, Cauliflower and Lettuce. A sowing of Lettuce can be made. This can be larger than usual, as it will last for a longer period. Sowings of Onions for spring planting can be made. Land should be firm and clean. Clear away pest-eaten leaves, also spent crops and weeds. ..Either place them in a compost heap and treat it with super and sulphate of ammonia or bury them. Late Tomatoes should be gathered'as soon as they start to colour. Ripen them indoors. Pumpkins and Pie Melons can be cut and stored as soon as the skin gets hard. FLOWER GARDEN. Weather has held up planting operations. It has been an excellent opportunity to get rid of weeds. Planting of Narcissi, Hyacinths, Tulips and Iris can still be done. Anemones and Ranunculi can be planted where possible. Sowings of hardy annuals can be made. Seedlings of perennials and biennials should be transplanted as soon as ready. A sowing of early flowering Sweet Peas can be made. Larkspurs, Mignonette, Scabious do well from autumn sowing. Sow Iceland Poppies. Early seedlings should be pricked out as soon as ready. \ Chrysanthemums should be disbudded. Caterpillars and grubs must be controlled by spraying with arsenate or dusting with derris powder. Keep spent blooms picked off Dahlias. This will prolong the flowering season. Plant Liliums. Early planting is essential for success. FRUIT GARDEN. Useless fruit trees should be cut out at once. Gather Apples and Pears as they mature. Handle carefully. Cut out old fruited growths or canes of Loganberries and Raspberries. Fallen fruit should be collected and buried deeply. Partial pruning can be given the trees as soon as the fruit is off.

SWEET PEAS AUTUMN SOWN BETTER THAN SPRING. It is generally known that autumnsown sweet peas produce better results than spring sown. They have a longer period of blooming and yield much finer flowers. The reason of this is that during the winter months, although they do not appear to be making any headway, they are all the time forming roots, and when spring comes they have strength enough to throw up strong growth from the base, and can then go ahead, and with good cultivation will produce such blooms as are to be seen at leading shows. Sweet peas can be sown from the end of February onwards. If a cold frame is available they may be wintered in this, but it is not absolutely necessary to have this convenience. They are hardy subjects, and can be treated as such. Drills about 2in deep should be drawn out, and the seed sown fairly thickly to allow for losses from birds and slugs.

The seeds should germinate in about 10 days. Cover them with pea' guards or other protection from birds, as this is the time they take a fancy to them. If they are left unprotected you may come one morning and see them all lying on top of the ground. Cover them at the time of sowing. At any rate, put a few strands of black cotton over them. It is advisable to select well-drained land, not a piece where water lies, but as a rule if well trenched you are not troubled this way. Plants do not appear to make headway after about early June, but they are still making root, and go away rapidly when the growing season starts. They will be found to have a great advantage over those sown in September. If they are to be wintered in a frame it is best to sow in shallow boxes and, when large enough, to pot them up singly, or two in a pot, according to space at disposal. Then stand the pots thick in the frames, plunging the pots up to the rims in ashes. This prevents the roots from being frozen through the pots. ORANGE WALLFLOWER. One of the most cheerful flowers in spring and early summer is the orange wallflower botanically known as Cheiranthus Allionii, and commonly as the Siberian Wallflower. It grows only one foot high, and is therefore suitable for borders and rockeries. It may be sown in autumn to flower next spring, though it is a perennial. It bears huge quantities of seeds, and if these are removed as soon as noticed it will keep on bearing flowers all summer. A somewhat similar plant, but with mauve flowers, is Cheiranthus (or Eraysimum) linifolium. It reaches a height of about 9 inches. The writer has had a plant of this bearing flowers from December until the present time. A point to note is that these two species of plants do well in sunny. dry positions. It is advisable to make the ground firm before planting either of these two species of dwarf wallflowers. TURNIPS. In the summer, most people do not appreciate turnips, but in autumn.

winter and spring it is a different story. The grubs of the diamondbacked moth have always damaged turnips sown in summer, and in the last six or seven years the grubs of the large white butterfly have made matters worse. If seed of turnip, radish, cabbage and related plants is sown now, the seedlings should be dusted occasionally with derris dust Und sprayed at least once with arsenate of lead.

Two main types of turnip may be sown now: the white (such as Snowball), and the yellow-fleshed (such as Orange Jelly, often called Golden Ball). The white is the more attractive, but the yellow keeps better- in winter. Early Milan is very pretty with its coloured top, but it does not grow as large as the others. Its earliness is its chief merit.

For turnips the soil should be fairly rich; if it is poor, some superphosphate should be worked well into the soil (if it is left in the bottom of the drill it interferes with the germination of the turnip seed). When the weather is dry, the drill should be well watered an hour or two before the sowing, and the surface of the soil will need a patting down to consolidate it. Black cotton should be stretched along the rows, otherwise the birds will pull up nearly all the seedlings. When the plants are about two and a-half inches high, they should be thinned, and then sprayed with arsenate of lead. Swedes can also be sown, but they need more spacing. It is better to sow them in November, but then they are so much exposed to the depredations of the diamond-backed moth. To help on all varieties of turnips sown in autumn, give them a good watering, once a week, and dust a little “super” alongside the rows, 'A SEED HINT. Once more we want to save seeds, and once more the birds want to eat them. A simple way to protect the seed-head is to. cover it up on a dry day with a little bag of ordinary paper or cellophane, and to tie this around the flower stem. This procedure is necessary in the saving of seed from cosmos, French and African marigolds, zinnias and other flowers with daisy-like heads. The same is necessary with the seed of lettuce, except that several dozen seed-heads may be enclosed in the one paper bag. CLAY SOILS NOVEL METHOD OF TREATMENT It is too much to expect that heavy, wet clay may be reduced to a state of perfect friability in one season, but with perseverance and patience, stubborn clay can be made fertile. It will then be more productive and resistant to draught than light soils. The writer has seen a stretch of stiff clay treated in an unusual way. but with wonderfully good results. The ground was dug in autumn in such a way that when the task was finished, it lay in ridges and hollows. The ridges were liberally dressed with slaked lime. All along the hollows. pea haulm, the vines of runner beans, tops from asparagus beds and straw were placed in a layer six inches deep, and covered with only about three inches of soil. During winter, the hollows were frequently flooded with water

and because the green rubbish lay shallow and wet, decay had far advanced by spring. The lime had pulverised the clay of the ridges. Then the whole area was dug again, starting so that the trench crossed the ends of the ridges and hollows. This facilitated the mixing of the limed soil with the decaying matter and soon after digging it was possible to rake the surface down to a fine tilth. Later in that year some magnificent vegetables were to be seen on the plot. The same ground had been the despair of the previous owner, who had given up hope of being able to grow anything.