YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 18, 27 October 1939, Page 45

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Anne Earncliff

Brown

[No. 8]

garden begged me just to carry on, adding that she loved to watch other women work in their gardens. So I continued to stretch black cotton over small lettuce plants. Then I raked the fine earth over another row of Green Feast peas. My enthusiastic watcher disapproved of the firm tramp, tramp of my garden shoes as a finale to the pea planting. However, I continued to press the fine tilth well down. Newly set plants and seeds, like small babies, are happier if firmly tucked in. "Plant firmly" is always timely advice. Even if you have carrots, parsnips, white turnips and beet all thinned you will probably have a row of lettuce or late sown onions in need of thinning. Naturally you will make a transplanting of these thinnings, and the slight check given to them allows the original row to be usefully ahead in the kitchen, too. Radishes, because they ask so little of the grower, generally receive less than their share of room. In all cases leave plenty of room for the full development of the plant. Women gardeners have the name of being "too mean" to thin properly. Actually too close spacing is less economical in the final result. Lettuce, in good soil, require from 6 to 9 inches between plants, parsnips 9 to 12 inches. Small greens such as spinach T a visitor finding me in the

and parsley you can judge according to growth. Even in cooler climates, butter, French and runner beans should now be showing up. Scarlet runners are attractively decorative in both flower and vegetable garden. If earlier climbers, such as sweet peas, have not grown successfully a useful and very attractive cover for the supports is made by sowing scarlet runner beans and climbing nasturtiums alternately. While we in the South Island are still uneasy on "nippy" nights lest frosts (even as late as November 5 I have seen them) catch our outdoor tomato plants, the northern folks will be busy pinching back the growth and removing unwanted laterals. My visitor, who by now is enjoying a cup of tea and yesterday’s ginger gems which a few minutes in a hot oven have converted into hot buttered dainties, tells me that on her way here she has. collected several sugar bags of ashes from gorse fires by the road-side. On country trips she carries an old shovel and a few bags... . "in case" as she vaguely explains, Should frost nip your earlier tomato plants, you won’t forget that wood-ash. and especially the ash of gorse, is much appreciated by tomato plants. Mix it well with the deep, leaf-mouldy soil, and your vines will thrive.