VEGETABLE GARDEN

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29245, 1 July 1960, Page 6

VEGETABLE GARDEN

Broad beans and early peas may be sown in good warm positions. Vacant ground should be turned over roughly and limed. Green crops that are far enough advanced can now be dug in with lime and left to decompose in preparation for spring sowings. With lupins, the digging-in stage is reached when the blue flowers appear. Getting Ready for Potatoes The potato crop is usually not given much thought until just before the sets are planted. It cannot be impressed too strongly upon those who are growing the potato that much of the success or failure of the crop depends upon the preparations. One of the foremost considerations should be to have the sets in proper condition at the time of planting, furnished with short, green, strong shoots. This may seem a trivial matter, but it goes a long way towards a crop of evensized, clean tubers at lifting time. To attain this end, the sets for seed purposes should be picked out as aoon after digging as pos-

sible and placed in boxes. Stand the tubers with the broad or “rose” ehd upward, and stand the boxes in a cool, but frost-free position and exposed to the full light. The ground for early potatoes should be well manured a good time before the sets are planted, so that plenty of plant food is available as soon as the plant requires any. The ground should be prepared and manured a month before planting takes place. Seed potatoes should be boxed now for sprouting. Ea'rly varieties preferred are Epicure, Robin Adair, Chippewa, Arran Banner, ClifFs Kidney and King Edward, but the later cropping kinds can also be treated and will mature more quickly in consequence. Forcing Rfiubarb A root of rhubarb can be nicely forced by placing a fair-sized box or barrel with a moveable top over a large clump, and covering round it with . fresh, strawy manure. The rhubarb will blanch and prove very sweet and succulent. At one time seakale' used

often to be grown in the manner, using a cement cask with the top and bottom removed and buried in fresh, strawy manure, and it proved a very succulent vegetable. .