YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 61, 23 August 1940, Page 55

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann

Earncliff Brown

(No. 42)

letter from an enthusiastic gardener temporarily turned into nurse, cook, and housemaid. Despite his crowding duties this "mere man" found time to write of the golden splashes of crocus in his flower garden; to tell of cutting props for a clothes lines from his willows; to praise Susie the sucker-no he has not gone pig-minded-merely lost his heart to the vacuum cleaner at work; and finally to urge me to write in praise of salsify. He declares: "We are growing much more this year for it is really a most delicious thing--comparable to asparagus, I think." He then tells how in his experimenting as a cook he has made a great success of his salsify, first using the carefully boiled and mashed root as a foundation for salsify patties: 2 eggs and toasted bread crumbs with seasoning added and the cakes fried in deep fat till golden brown. Salsify soufflé from the same boiled vegetable and cooked as the usual soufflé was equally successful. R te te I had an interesting Another Spring Delicacy A further very welcome spring delicacy can be obtained if a few roots of salsify are left in the ground and the first "chards" or young flower stems are cut when they shoot in the spring and used much as we use asparagus, Continental cooks have long been aware of the virtues of this vegetable, and New Zealand gardeners will find it a very well worth while addition to the kitchen garden, Grow it as you would parsnips or carrots. The plants do best in deep rich but sandy soil in a sunny position. Heavy soil requires that holes about 2 feet deep be made and filled with fine sandy loam. Either plants or seed can be set in these pockets. Seed should be sown in early November, and in the sandy type of soil plant it in drills 1 inch deep and about 15 inches between drills. When big

enough to thin, space about 9 inches apart. Lift in autumn or winter, taking care not to damage the roots as they bleed if injured by garden tools. Scorzonera is also worthy of a trial, and is grown ‘exactly like the salsify. Usually a covering of hay or leaf litter is scattered on these in winter and they are left in the ground and dug as required. Meanwhile, plant out in your destined salsify space, lettuce plants or seed, and also plenty of all varieties of spinach. Even if you have a very small vegetable plot, it pays to grow your own spinach, for freshly cut spinach has a greater culinary value than that which has been bought in the market. Spinach

being a quick growing vegetable can be sown between drills of vegetables of slower growth and later maturity. Don’t Neglect Sweet Peas Spare a few minutes every day to bring your sweet peas up in the way they should grow. The more forward plants will have used their first twiggy supports to help them up to their permanent support. ‘See that all unwanted side growths and tendrils are removed, and only the one, two, or even three main stems are left to carry the flowers. While the earth should be well firmed round autumn sown plants, be sure to leave a free loose surface soil, and if slugs are troublesome put a ring of lime and soot round young tender plants. Speaking of soot also reminds me that an application of slaked soot to your clematis roots now will deepen the colour of the blooms,