GARDEN CALENDAR FOR APRIL.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3898, 14 April 1877, Page 2

GARDEN CALENDAR FOR APRIL.

(From " Hay's Annual Garden Book.") Kitchen Garden. — If favorable weather, continue to plant out lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, savoy, celeiy, a few for spring use. Sow turnip, carrot, radish, for a succession. Tie up endive for blanching, and plant out a few more from the seed bud ; mould up brocoli, cabbage, and all plants that require it. Earth up celery ; let the leaves be dry before putting soil to it ; the same will apply to leeks. Expose the fruit of the tomato to the sun and light, by putting stakes under the plants, and shortening some of the shoots ; they fruit well when planted against a close fence, and trained along it. Pumpkins; expose the fruit and thin out some of the bines when too thick. Cucumbers almost over. Attend to the ingathering of late crops of potatoes and onions ; clear and dig vacant ground ; sow with oats for spring use. Vegetables in season: celery, cauliflower, kidney beans, onions, leeks, cabbage, spinach, rhubarb, lettuce, endive, and small salading ; beet, parsnip, turnip, carrot, vegetable marrow, and tomato. Fkuit Garden. — Grapes, preserve a few bunches of thick-skinned sorts (as Black Haiubro) for a few weeks longer, by cutting a piece of wood, with the branch, and hang up in a cool, dry house or shed, or x>lace the end of the branch in a bottle of water, and they may be thus preserved for months. The gathering in of apples and pears must now have dairy attention; take care of the choice sorts, do not bruise the late keeping ones, when they part freely from the stems they are ready ; if J gathered before, they will shrivel ; use them as carefully as eggs, and do not heap too many together or the upper ones will bruise the under ones and cause decay. Now is a good time to mark any of the trees that require to be removed, any worthless sort that do not answer the climate ; also trees that are on the decay, should be noted down to be replaced at the proper season. Gather in melons as soon as they part from the bine : pumpkins and vegetable marrow, pie-melon, tomato, chillies, cape gooseberries, and figs. Fruit in season : — Apples, pears, figs, grapes, melons, oranges, and lemons. Plums all but over, the same with peaches, except for culinary use. Flower Garden. — Dahlias will still be in great beauty, keep them securely staked, and give them plenty of water, also liquid manure twice a week. As the season of beauty is nearly over with many of the bedding plants, it would be advisable to cut back, and remove many of the flower stems, and if moderate weather prevail they will flower again towards the middle of next month, so as to prolong the season of flowering. • Remove and root out many of. the annuals that are looking shabby, always keep a few plants in store to fill up any conspicuous vacancies. Chrysanthemums will be in flower now,

water with liquid manure to insure the expansion of large flowers, tie up if necessary ; but the best plan is to keep the plants pegged down on the surface of the ground, it adds very much to the beauty of the plants j taken as a whole^ still preserve neatness in this department — mowing, sweeping, and destroying weeds as they appear. Greenhojjse. — Insert cuttings of choice plants, such* as pansies, pentstemons, antirrhinum, petunias, verbenas, fuchsias, pelargoniums, both show and zonale, and almost all soft-wooded plants, if inserted in a mixture of soil composed of leaf mould, silver sand, and volcanic soil, in about equal parts. After they are in the frame two days, give a little air at first, gradually increasing the supply as the cuttings appear to take root ; . remove the shade at sundown. Continue to pot off the earliest sown calceolarias and cinera.rias, for spring flowering, also Chinese, primulas ; the old plants may be repotted in light rich soil, seedlings pot in threeinch pots, and keep them close and shaded for" a few days. Remove plants that have done flowering,' such as balsams, cockscombs, globe amarantlras. , Bulbs and tubers that have ripened their leaves sliould be removed, and their place filled with plants coming into flower. -Sow mignonette in boxes for winter flowering. Hetrocentra rosea will be coming into flower,- in succession ; Gesneria Zebrina, several sdrts of begonias, vincas, chrysanthemums grown in. pots, salvia splendens, fuchsias, and euphorbias, all Contribute to proiong the season with flowers.