USE THE HOE
WILL HELP THE CROPS. Hot: weather is rather trying on winter greens and other crops sown and planted to maintain a succession, but if the soil is scuffle hoed after every shower to shut in the moisture it is remarkable- how well crops come on. By maintaining a reasonable amount of organic matter in the soil, cultivating deeply, and scuffle-hoeing after every shower, it is remarkable how little water is necessary. Many people water far too much, and not only do they cool the soil and thereby retard growth, but they wash the soluble plant food out of the soil into the drains or subsoil. Aphis affected plants should be dusted with derris powder or sprayed with soapy water to which a little nicotine has been added. The soapy water from the wash tubs will do. Onions and shallots can be harvested as they ripen, and second early potatoes dug and stored away. Seeds of peas and beans can be collected as they ripen and spread out in boxes to dry. Later they can be cleaned and stored away in cardboard boxes or ■ paper bags where rats, and mice cannot get. at them. Spinach, lettuce, raddish and onions can bo sown, and blue lupins, mustard er some other green catch crop can be sown on all vacant, ground, to be dug in later on. The present, is a good time to trench or otherwise prepare ground for planting fruit trees and bushes. Trenching is best, and if any compost heap or other organic material is available it can bo buried in. The old canes ol raspberries, loganberries and the hybrid blackberries which have fruited can be cut out to allow the young canes ! to get the benefit of the sun and fresh ' air. so that they may develop to their fullest and ripen tin properly for next season’s fruiting. The young growths on goosberries and currants can also ' be thinned out a bit. but. it is too j soon to carry out the proper pruning. ■ Keep the runners cut off the straw'l berries, and fork or hoe the soil be- | tween the rows and lhe plants. I Collect fruit as it ripens, and spray I for plum and pear leech with hellei bore solution, and for powdery mildew | and rod mite on apples with lime sulH phur. 1 in 125. Trees can be root- ’* pruned.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 March 1941, Page 2
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398USE THE HOE Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 March 1941, Page 2
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