MUSHROOM BEDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 147, 24 June 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

MUSHROOM BEDS.

HOW TO PREPARE. It is now safe to make mushroom beds. This may bo done in a boarded-up bed, or in a hole sunk in tlio ground, which keeps the material together. When well beaten or trodden down, and the heat has fallen to 80 degrees, the bed may bo spawned. This consists of breaking up the brick or cake of spawn into

pieces and burying them lin deep in the manure and about Ift apart all over the bed. A thermometer is used for thrusting into the bed to ascertain the heat, and as soon as there is no danger of its getting too high the bed is covered to an inch in depth with good, heavy loam, beaten well down with the back of the spade. Finally, a layer of straw is placed over the bed to retain the heat.

LATE VINES. If the late-started vines have not been pruned, no time should be lost in completing this operation. Few vines, provided the house has been kept well open and free ventilation admitted, will not by this time have sufficiently ripened their wood to admit of the pruning being done with safety. Tlie pruning should bo done as soon as possible after the sap has returned, so as to give the vines as long a season of rest as possible before the sap again becomes active. The professional grapegrower needs little advice as to liow and when to prune; it is for the amateur growers who are often at a loss as to the safest time to perform this operation. In this, no better plan can bo followed than to prune immediately the sap has returned, or when most of the leaves have fallen, not necessarily every leaf, as often a few will adhere to the laterals after the sap has returned. Where only comparatively early varieties arc grown that mature and ripen at the same season, there will bo little difficulty as to the time of pruning. It is when mixed varieties—early, medium and late—are grown in the same house that difficulty is often experienced, the pruning of the early vines being left until tlio late ones have lost their foliage. In such cases it is far better to prune the variety as it is ready. As frequently stated, if any doubt exists as to whether the sap is dormant, the safest plan for the amateur to adopt is to cut back one of the lowest laterals before finally pruning, and if, after a. short time no bleeding takes place, it will be quite safe to procecd with the pruning. PRUNING REEr AND WHITE CURRANTS. These are pruned in quite a different manner to the black variety and the following only applies to red and white currants. These carry their fruit chiefly

on short fruiting spurs that carry on from year to year. The aim should be to obtain a tree with a short clean stem from which arises five or six well-placed stout stems or branches. At intervals on these branches there will form short leafy shoot*, at the base of which will bo produced short rounded dormant buds, and it is from these rounded buds and short knot-like branches that the fruit

is produced. The short lateral shoots made last season should be cut back to one or two buds. This will induce the production and development of the fruit buds at the base. If it is desired to increase the height of tho . tree the leader should be allowed to remain at a length of about a foot.