WINTER VEGETABLE CROPS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 45, 23 February 1939, Page 23

WINTER VEGETABLE CROPS

Seeds sown now while the soil still has warmth will come away very rapidly as soon as rain comes. The success of crops sown or planted now very largely depends upon the way the land is prepared, for at no time is the result of deep cultivation more evident than after a few weeks of dry weather. To grow crops to the best advantage, especially during summer or early autumn, deep digging, or better still, J trenching, and manuring, is the surest means of success. This applies to every variety o,f vegetable crop, especially where the garden is on the hillside with a hard clay subsoil. When ground is simply dug over time after time, scarcely to the depth of the spade, the roots of the crops are naturally confined to a very shallow feeding area, as they cannot readily penetrate the hard pan formed below the broken surface. Under such conditions the moisture from the subsoil cannot pass freely upwards during dry weather, nor can an excess of moisture during heavy rains pass freely downwards. Every advantage should be taken of favourable conditions to sow stump-rooted carrots, tur-nip-rooted beet, turnips, garden swedes, spinach, silver beet, parsley^ and a little lettuce, while it is still a

good gamble to sow a few peas of an early variety which will mature quickly and some dwarf beans. It is always more satisfactory when sowing to draw the drills to a line. Very few, if any, people can get the rows straight by eye, and even in the vegetable garden there is satisfaction in having tidiness. No doubt the plants would grow as well in crooked lines, but the work of hoeing and thinning wtmld be more trouble. ' Dwarf-growing crops should, be sown with the rows from 12 to 15 inches apart, according to variety, allowing sufficient space between the rows for hoeing and weeding as well as for the development of the plants. Mulching does much to conserve the moisture and thus lessen the labour of watering, and while most of the crops are assisted by this practice, the more surface-rooting varieties, which are the first to feel the effects of dry weather, are naturally the most benefited. Their season of usefulness is prolonged by mulching, for although it may not altogether preclude the necessity for watering, it certainly assists to retain a more genial moisture at the roots. Another advantage of mulching is that it checks to some extent the growth of weeds and when watered ► through a mulch the soil is less liable Ito get caked.