GARDENING NOTES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXII, Issue 4639, 13 May 1938, Page 8

GARDENING NOTES

GREEN MANURES. ENRICH ALL SOILS. The increasing scarcity of stable manure makes it necessary to look round for substitutes. One of the most valuable of these is green manure. White mustard or prickly spinach is sown this month, the earlier the better, and later the tops are dug in. The latter are rich in humus, which is one of the most valuable ingredients of stable manure.

The plants don't contain a lot of food, but you can easily make good the deficiency by using artificial manures immediately before sowing or planting, and occasionally during the growing season.

More and more gardeners' are adopting the green manuring practice with conspicuous success. In view of its soundness I do not hesitate to advise you, if you have difficulty in getting sufficient stable manure, to sow down any beds, borders, or vegetable plots which become vacant before the end of this month.

Very little pre-sowing preparation is necesai*y. The land at this season is rich, hence the plants mentioned grow very rapidly. You must, however, make root action possible by forking a foot deep. Break down the lumps finely, tread fairly firmly, make the surface even, broadcast the seed thickly, and just cover it by light raking.

Should you have difficulty in getting a passable seed bed, owing to the dryness of the soil, water well the day before forking, and the lumps will fall as much as you want them to. As green manure, there is nothing to choose between the white mustard and the prickly spinach. Both break down quickly on being dug in, and on decaying yield the best form of humus. Other points, however, help to determine the choice. If your land is infested with wireworms, make white mustard your choice, because on decay it generates oil of mustard, which is fatal to this serious foe. You can reckon that mustard is ready for digging in eight weeks after sowing.

TIMELY TOPICS. NOTES, NEWS AND VIEWS. The great point in growing bulbs in rooms in fibre is to maintain the material evenly moist always. Storage conditions which are too dry and warm cause apples to shrivel; clean surroundings are of great importance. Try working a little rotted manure into beds where wallflowers are to be planted; your plants will be infinitely I finer. Wallflowers have another requirement—lime. Daisies and other small weeds will be destroyed and grass encouraged if a dressing of sulphate of ammonia is applied at the rate of two ounces to the square yard. Although rose pruning proper is not done until spring, bush and standard roses will winter more satisfactorily if over-long shoots are shortened, all seed-pods clipped off and any dead branches removed. Where thistles are a nuisance I find that it is a good idea, instead of taking the trouble to dig them up, to cut off the tops, leaving a small portion of the stalk showing. After about three days it will be found that the roots can be pulled up without any What is the cause ? It may be deep planting.

Actually only the ball of soil should be covered, as deeper planting almost certainly means graft disease. Secondly, many clematis trees are planted in unsuitable places. Where it can be arranged, a western aspect is the most suitable. Gardeners in the know often plant at the west end of a house, training the growth on the south side. That method is not universally possible, but everybody can shield clematis roots

with some spreading plant such as an oriental poppy or an anchusa, to protect them from the scorching sun which keeps them for ever in the doldrums. The two above causes cf failure can only be remedied by transplanting during the coming autumn. Thirdly, clematis may be knocked out of time by the kindness of the gardener who refuses to use a pruning knife on it. As the years pass by, the plants become smothered by their own redundant flowerless growth. The young, would-be flowers get no chance. The correct method of dealing with jackmanii and lanuginosa kinds is to cut them down each July to within a foot or 15in. from the ground level. The young growth that results from that process blooms beautifully in its season. If your clematis is overgrown, remember your surgical duties next July. Fourthly, all clematises are lime lovers. Plants which are pale in the leaf and habitually dropping their leaves pretty surely need some lime.