What To Plant In The Garden Now

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 39, 15 February 1945, Page 3

What To Plant In The Garden Now

ROOT crops that were sown early are doing well and will be a good standby for winter. Hoe and cultivate the ground between the rows. A planting of potatoes made now should give a fair crop of mediumsized tubers and also plenty of seed sets. Vegetable seeds that can be sown now include dwarf beans, both white and yellow-fleshed turnips, beetroot, spinach, beet, carrot, cabbage and cauliflower for use in winter and spring. Onions for next season usually receive attention about this time. The seed bed should be made quite firm and the seed sown in drills about one foot apart. Onions sown in February and March are meant to be transplanted in the early spring. In the flower garden push on with bulb planting. Early planting of Iceland poppies can be made now and seed sown of such subjects as sweet william, canterbury bells, mignonette and pansies. Spray and stake up dahlias and chrysanthemums and spray with arsenate of lead for control of caterpillars. * * * * Home-saved seeds of some plants can be very disappointing, but in other cases quite good results are obtainable. In view FLOWER SEEDS of the comparative TO SAVE AND scarcity of many SOW seeds it is certainly worth seeing what can be done. The first thing to note is that very few perennials breed true from seed; that is to-say. the plants will not produce flowers of exactly the same colour, nor possibly of the same kind or quality, as those of the parents, no matter what, precautions are taken. Sometimes this is serious, but not always important. For example, if delphiniums or lupins are required solely for garden display it is probable that seed saved carefully from the best plants only will give considerable satisfaction. For exhibition, however, it it almost certain that they would not be good enough. Other popular plants, from which seed may be saved if the idea is only to have flowers for the garden or cutting are scabeous aquilegias. geums, coreopsis, oriental poppies, hollyhocks, foxgloves, sweet Williams and gaillardias. To overcome this difficulty, the specialist grows different colours of the same plant in separate batches, far removed from one another, or else takes special precautions to prevent insects getting at them. As a rule the amateur finds such measures impracticable, but those who are sufficiently enthusiastic may like to try the following scheme. Make a few skeleton boxes about a foot square and eighteen inches in height, out of laths tacked together and cover the sides and tops with butter muslin, leaving the bottoms open. These make simple cages which can be slipped over selected plants and enable them to produce their seeds without possibility of insects reaching the flowers with foreign pollen. To make quite certain that the flowers are fertilised with their own pollen, it will be advisable to remove the cages occasionally while the plants are in full bloom and tap the stems smartly or dust the flowers with a camel hair brush. Be careful that when the cage is put back a stray bee or other insect is not enclosed within it. Those who do not wish to go to such trouble may still save seed from selected plants* so long as they remember that it is very unlikely that next year's seedlings will be of exactly the same colour. If a mixture does not matter, well and good. Some seed is produced in pods or capsules of one type or another, and these should be harvested when they turn yellow and show signs of splitting open. Other seeds, and this is typical of the whole daisy family, of which marigolds, gaillardias and coreopsis are given as examples, are carried in heads. In their case the simplest test for ripeness is to draw the thumb across the head. If the seeds come away readily it is time they were gathered.

The yellow kowhai is well known, but its cousin, Clianthus puniceus, sometimes called the scarlet kowhai or kaka beak, is A COLOURFUL not grown as much NATIVE as it should be. It was once _ quite common on the outlying islands, Coromandel Peninsula and cliffs on the East Coast, but now it is rarely found in its wild state, except round Lake Waikaremoana. This shrub has rather a straggling habit if left to itself, but if it is clipped lightly after flowering it becomes a fine bushy plant. The leaves are pinnate, having eight to fourteen pairs of leaflets. The large scarlet flowers are borne in pendulous racemes, sometimes as many as twelve blooms on the raceme. Being pendulous, the flowers are somewhat hidden under the leaves. Like so many other native plants, the scarlet kowhai will grow from cuttings taken just after the flowers are finished, or from seed. The seed should be soaked before being sown. *#v * * A striking feature of a St. Helier's garden are the clumps of the native toi-toi, now coming into bloom, rhe plants chosen for this FEATHERY garden are of the pink PLUMES strain frequently seen in the Waitakeres. Some people have difficulty in distinguishing our native species from that of the Argentine pampas. When in bloom, they may be easily identified for the flower heads of the imported grass stand up aggressively, whilst those of the native toi-toi bend over and sway gracefully to and fro in the gentlest breeze.