FOR THE BEGINNER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 August 1940, Page 9

FOR THE BEGINNER

SOME USEFUL HINTS. With the new season started the occupiers of new houses and sections will be keen to get to work. Where it is a case of breaking in a new plot, the first part of the work is the hardest and most tedious. Try to realise that the whole success of a year’s cropping will depend, to a very large degree, upon the thoroughness with which the preparatory stages of cultivation are carried out. Opportunities missed now may leave their mark all through the year.

Assuming that all the ground has now been dug roughly, it is? necessary to take every chance to do a little more toward getting the top spit fined down to what is termed a good tilth, a crumbly state of soil, with no large lumps. One of the most useful tools a man can have when working a piece of fresh ground, is like a strong, heavy

fork, bent at right angles to the handle. No better instrument could be devised for breaking down stubborn clods of heavy soil. That is a task which should be undertaken at the first opportunity. It is not at all helpful to attempt such work when the soil is sticky or sodden, but after a drying wind or a day or two of sunshine, it will be comparatively easy. Some soils will call for a repetition of the operation, and in other cases, where large chunks of earth have been buried, the whole of the top spit must be spade dug a second time, breaking down the lumps as the work proceeds. If large lumps of solid earth remain buried in what is to be the root run of crops, good even growth will be frustrated. When dry weather sets in the lumps will harden like bricks.

Before seed sowing or general planting begins, the whole ground surface requires to be reduced to a good level and even degree of fineness. If one wishes to add further nourishment to ground which was not liberally manured at the autumn digging, the best opportunity is afforded while breaking down the top spit. Good things for present application are guano. fish manure, blood and bone or any of the proprietary fertilisers that are of an organic character. Old soot may also be distributed at the final breaking down. This material is of especial value whore the onion crop is to be grown and is also good for the turnip bed. Where soot is not used, one of the brands of hydrated lime may bo spread and raked in. unless. of course, the ground has already been limed.