HINTS FOR THE AMATEUR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1939, Page 3

HINTS FOR THE AMATEUR

FRUIT, FLOWERS AND VEGETABLES WORK FOR THE WEEK VEGETABLE GARDEN. Continue to sow spinach, white and golden, ball turnips, lettuce, peas, and broad beans to maintain a succession, and plant cabbage and autumn cauliflower. Continue to thin crops as they develop, and keep the hoe going among all growing crops, i Avoid watering as long as possible, for if we do get good showers the soil is then waterlogged and cold, and the growth of the crops is checked. Earth up the runner beans and then provide them with stakes. These need not be twiggy for the beans twine, but they should be at least six feet out of the ground and to fix them securely a wire should be fixtd to stout posts at each end of the row and stretched along the line to each stake. Peas should also be staked before they begin to fall over, and broad beans are also the better of some support in windy positions. As soon as the broad beans have set five bunches of pods the tips of the stems should be pinched out. This usually prevents attacks of the bean aphis. Prepare celery trenches and plant out the early crop, plant leeks and give the onions a light dressing of sulphate of ammonia, one ounce to the square yard and water it in. FLOWER GARDEN. Tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, and other spring flowers which have ripened can be lifted and stored away in a cool airy shed. Those growing in grass can also be mown over now and the foliage cleared off those growing in shrubbery and herbaceous borders. Fill up the places the bulbs occupied in the herbaceous borders with scarlet salvias, tuberous and fibrous begonias, zinnias and salpiglossis. Spray the ramblers for mildew with lime sulphur one in 120. and should green-fly appear spray with warm, soapy water to which a little nicotine has been added. Prune back any very strong shoots and keep the beds and borders scuffle hoed regularly. Keep the rock garden and newly-planted bedding plants watered, but the established kinds will do with a hoe to maintain a surface mulch.