THE GARDEN

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 111, 10 April 1926, Page 11

THE GARDEN

THE FLOWER GARDEN

Such plants as hollyhocks, gaillardias, anemones and ranunculus may be planted in the garden this month. It is a pity that hollyhocks are so much neglected nowadays as they are splendid plants for the back of a border. No doubt it was owing to the way they took rust that gave them a set-back, but if they are raised from seed and are planted out in new soil they will grow for sometime without showing any signs of tho disease, and if it does show a spraying or two with bordeaux mixture will keep it in check. Plant out pansies for spring flowering in a well worked and manured soil. If the conditions are suitable these plants will go on glowing all the winter and will lower early in the spring. Plant out antirrhinums for spring flowering. These plants are very hardy and they ,are not liable to be attacked by slugs. They like a dry soil that is not waterlogged at any time and it is a good plan to work in some old manure before setting them out. Some beautiful colours can be got now and, as they come fairly true from seed, some very nice beds of them can be mado. Some of the newer varieties offered by the English seedsmen have flowers nearly twice the size of the older kinds and are worth getting, as they are nice compact growers and lower for a very long time. Plant out pentstemons that have been raised from cuttings. They will begin to Bower as soon as the winter is over and are a great help towards keeping the garden gay and full of lowers. Aquilegias and canterbury bells should also be planted for spring lowering. The first named is most useful for cutting and comes in at an off season when very few lowers are available. Sweet peas should be sown as soon as possible now. There are many growers who advocate sowing the seed in boxes and planting it out where it is to grow, but we are inclined to think that if the seed is sown where it is intended to flower that it does better and, after all, one lias to look after the plants to protect them from slug, whether they are grown in boxes or are planted out in the open. The soil for them should bo deeply dug and planty of manure added to the lower spits as the roots of these plants will penetrate a long way into the soil if they are given a chance. Cinerarias are splendid plants £pr shady situations under trees whore the frosts do not get. A bed of them is a pretty sight in tho spring and they are plants that should bo grown in every garden where there is a suitable place. If the ground available is under trees, dig it up and add some well rotted manure to it and set the plants out about fifteen inches apart. They may want a little water to start them, but after that they are best left alone except for a few hoeings. ROSES. Next month the rose planting season will be with us again .and, al- | though you may not get the plants that you huvo ordered in the first week, it is well to be prepared. Now beds have to bo made and they should be made sometime in advance of planting so as to allow tho soil time to settle down again after having been disturbed. Roses can bo grown in most ordinary soils if a little extra work is done for them. They are gross feeders and also like a soil that holds tho moisture for a long time when the weather is fairly dry. Such a soil must .have plenty of humus in it. They also like a soil that has not been deplete:! by growing roses before. : If you are going to put the new plants in a bed that has grown roses before, or want to fill up gaps in an old bed, take out tho soil where tho ne v plant is to bo put to a depth of about two feet and replace it with fresh soil, proferably from good grass land and to this add a certain amount of cow manure, mixing the lot together well a,nd treading it down firmly. Roses like firm planting more than anything elso. Leave some of the finer particles on top to bo scattered amongst tho roots of the young plants and, if possible, mix some basic slag tvith it. Basic slag is a splendid manure for roses at any time and if a little can bo used at planting time it will be available for the plants when they begin to grow in tho early spring. When making new beds it would be better if fresh soil could bo used rather than the exhausted soils so often found in gardens. If new soil can be got, put | it down below tho plants and use | some of tho old stuff on top. This can j he got at and manured when the plants are in the ground, but tho soil

Notes are published weekly under this heading, and readers interested in gardening are invited to send in questions relating to matters upon which they wish expert advice; answers will be published with the weekly notes.

below it will have to remain there until tho bushes are taken out or die away. When making a new bed work the ground at least two feet iu depth and put in plenty of good cow manure with the lower spits. If cow manure cannot be got sheep or pig will do very well, but the former is the best and it is known to hold moisture well. Never make the beds wider than can conveniently bo worked from either side, and this generally means that three rows of plants can be set out in 'them, allowing about thirty i'nalves from plant to plant. Drainage is very necessary for rose beds as it is a fact that they will not grow if they have wet feet, or the roots are standing in stagnant wator. It is a good plan to have some nice loamy turf well chopped up for putting round tho roots of the plants, and this can bo got ready now and kept in a handy place until it is wanted. A little basic slag mixed up with it will do no harm, but no other chemical manure must be used, or it will burn the roots. INSECT FRIENDS.

The Journal of Agriculture for March has a splendid article written by Dr R. J. Tillyard on tho insect friends of the gardener and fruitgrower. This article will appeal to gardeners, who come across all sorts and kinds of insects in their work. Some of them are injurious and some are quite the reverse. Since the Cawthron Institute has been going a number of insects have been brought into the country which have done an immense amount of good. It is very hard to estimate the value of the parasite aphelinus mali, which attacks woolly aphis on apple trees. Thp saving in sprays and other materials and labour must be enormous. Tho doctor tells how he came to realise that the insect could be made to work. He got them from different places and crossed the two varieties, and was successful in getting a variety that was hardy enough to withstand the temperature and variations of climate. At the present time he is trying to get a parasite that will attack earwigs. The parasite lays its eggs on plants eaten by earwigs and the egg is eaten by them and hatches inside its host, eating away, the vital organs. The ladybirds that cleaned up tho scale on the gum trees were another of the parasites worked upon at this institution, and now another one is being got to keep scale off oak trees. GREEN MANURING. When crops are being lifted and the land they were growing in is not wanted immediately for another one, it is essential that something should be done with it. If it is allowed to remain vacant it will soon become infested with bad weeds and, although they may be useful for digging, they will not add nearly as much to tlie soil as a good cover crop will do. The shortage of animal manure is largely due to the increase of motor transport, and manure is getting scarcer every year, and this moans that some other methods have to bo adopted to keep the soils of our gardens up to a high standard. In times past it was usual to dig in loads of manure as soon as a crop was lifted, but now if one gets a load he must consider himself very lucky. Fortunately, by using green crops and a certain amount of chemi cal manuro wo are able to keep up the fertility of our gardens, but the work must be done in time to get the best results. Whether we like it or not, a very decided change is taking place in our ideas of working tho soil, largely due to the cause mentioned above, but still a decided change, and tlie sooner we accommodate ourselves to it tho better our gardens will be. Soil cannot be worked year in year out without any additions being made to the plant food supply, and the sooner we realise this and make use of green manure the better.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MANURING

The raw material which a plant builds up into food is drawn from two sources—the soil and the air. It is in connection with the soil that the matter of manuring arises. Experiments have proved that, unless a certain amount of substances is in the soil, a plant cannot manufacture food in large 'enough quantities to induce growth, and if there is no water in the soil food cannot bo made at all. It is not the free water that matters so much as tho soil water, which is a thin coating covering each particle of and the only way in which it can get the soil below the surface. It is certain that no plant can absorb solids, food is by means of minute root hairs, which draw tho water to themselves and then the plant extracts the food

from this water. When a soil begins to deteriorate, as it will do when a heavy, crop is taken from it, the gardener takes steps to provide that soil with something that has been taken out. Ho does not know exactly wliat is missing, so he has to give the nearest to what ho considers is a complete manure. It was thought at one time, if the soil was analysed to find out what was missing, that it would bo enough to add this alone, but in practice this was disappointing and aid not give the results it should have done. Then it came to bo known that it required all the ingredients of a complete manure to work chemically together and so produce the food required by tho plant. Poor soils contain a largo amount of food which plants require, but this foocf is not in an immediately available form and plants set out in it will not flourish. If something can bo done to this kind of soil that will loosen up some of the unavailable, plant food, it. will becomo rich and will produce crops equal to the richest soils, but the tiling to do is not always apparent to tho cultivator. Sometimes liming is beneficial, and sometimes it is surface cultivation. There is no doubt that, if air can he admitted to the soil, it acts in conjunction with tho chemical elements in it and works for the good of tho plant. The subsoil may be the point of failure, and if this lias, not been broken up it would be a good plan to try it. By doing this you are enlarging the section of the ground, which is coming under tho influence of the air. There is another thing which is not often thought of, and that is soil-sickness, induced in the first place by over-manuring. This is rare indeed, hut is quite within tho hounds of possibilities, and there is no quicker way of bringing it to a suitablo stato for growing crops than by liming it. Humus is necessary to all soils, and this is supplied by rotting vegetation, and assists the action of the soil bacteria to form nitrates and from this leaves.