YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 85, 7 February 1941, Page 44

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 56)

late in writing. However, if I tell you that I’ve been reading "How Green Was My Valley," by Richard Llewellyn, you will understand that I have been away among the Welsh collieries; have known the green valley so vividly painted by this Welsh writer and have grieved to see the creeping destruction of that valley by the piles of slag and mine refuse. Wisdom there is in the book, too, for all who till the soil. Listen to this: "Want all, take all, and give nothing. The world was made on a _ different notion. You will have everything from the ground if you will ask the right way, but you will have nothing if not." Sound Advice And this brings me back to very sound advice given by one, of :you who grows tomatoes exceptionally well. This I know, for her outdoor ones were quite large, though still green and had developed rapidly. Her special gift to the tomato soil is a very liberal allowance of oyster shell dust-that valuable residue which any dealer in shell grit for poultry can supply. Dig it in deeply and thoroughly when you plant your young tomatoes, and a further dressing can also be given later. I have myself added fine chicken grit in the soil but the dust is more economical to buy and more readily available as plant food. "You will have everything" also that you desire if you mix this same shell dust in the ground where your carnations a feeling that I’m just a little

grow, and your dianthus too. All lime lovers will smile on your labours with this gift from the sea. Another hint from a friendly garden may prove useful to you, too. A short time ago readers were invited to suggest ways of enticing an equine hedge cropper to a_ certain troublesome quick fence, The difficulty seemed to be to make the hedge alluring but not foo alluring. Knowing the comparative scarcity of horses, obliging or otherwise, I suggest that you stretch a garden line along the length of your hedge, and guided by the taut string make a splendid level top by the use of the prosaic but efficient hedge clippers. Delight to the Eyes Flowering hedges of unusual beauty in some of your gardens were a delight to the eyes. One of. fuchsia (sheltered by palings but gaily overtopping these) was a joy to passers-by. A more serviceable but equally successful one was of manuka. Kept closely trimmed after. the flowering period the hedge: remains a close, compact growth, If the most usually known white manuka is grown you can raise your seedlings yourself from seed gathered in the manuka scrub land. Young seedling plants are often quite successfully transplanted from these areas also, but some of the larger flowering whites, or those rarer rosy pinks to vivid carmines can be supplied by nursery men for hedging plants. Manuka asks little in the way of special soil preparation, and stands up to extremes of heat and cold,