Gardening News & Notes Vegetables

Northern Advocate, 1 March 1947, Page 2

Gardening News & Notes

Vegetables

Sowings may be made of cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, radish, silver beet, turnip, parsnip and carrot. Plant out celery, cauliflower, and cabbage. Give late cabbages and cauliflowers frequent brisk hosings. This will benefit them and help to keep insect pests away. Oats and lupins are good crops for digging in later. If the ground is wanted early dig in grass cuttings and compost, with a sprinkling of lime added. See that melons get full sun heat to ripen them off. Pick tomatoes when they begin to colour and lay them on a shelf to ripen off. Don’t leave stored potatoes exposed. The potato moth is bad at this season. Harvest pumpkins and squashes as soon as they mature. Don’t over-pick rhubarb. Always leave a few leaves to develop the roots. Cut out all dead wood from fruit trees. Don’t leave fallen fruit lying on the ground. It it is sound, use it or give it away. If it is diseased, burn it. Flowers . . . It is bulb-planting time, and time to put in cuttings of many shrubs and perennial plants. Weeding, staking, spraying, cutting off dead blooms, and preparing ground for -planting annuals are necessary just now. J Chrysanthemums should be disbudded as soon as the buds show. Pull off any suckers at the roots. Keep the ground firm about the roots. Spray for rust and caterpillar. Give weak liquid manure and keep tied to supports. Small bulbs such as sparaxis. ixias. freesias, grape hyacinths, lachenalias, tritonias, babianas, etc., look well planted on a slope; and are also good for planting beneath shrubs. Sweet peas should be pinched back when a few inches high. This causes them to send out stronger growth near the ground. For hot, dry. windy situations, lantanas are excellent. The compactgrowing. yellow-flowered variety makes a good shrub or dividing hedge in parts of the garden. Lantana sellowiana has mauve flowers, and is a semi-trailing plant; but it may be cut or tied to a stake to make a shrub, or trained up a wall or fence. Cuttings of short, side new growths, put in now. will make small flowering plants by next summer. Bougainvilleas have been very fine this season, and some of the newer varieties have flowered well. The last two long, dry summers have suited these climbers. They need warmth and sunshine, and will stand dry conditions when established. Cyttings of

short new growth root at this season in a warm place. The varieties of hibiscus have also flowered well these last two summers. Plants grow well in good soil in a sunny sheltered position, but they are frost-tender. Cuttings root at this season. Try short pieces taken with a heel, or pieces about the thickness of a pencil cut below a joint. Seedlings should be given plenty of air in a cool place; close conditions during hot, humid weather cause damping off. Keep the old plants of cyclamen shaded and moist until growth has started; frequent syringeings with clear water encourages healthy growth. Pot young plants of maidenhair fern for a winter supply of fronds. Seeds, Germination . . . A seed is an embryo plant ready to germinate as soon as conditions are favourable. These conditions are the presence of air (for the oxygen it contains), the presence of moisture, and the presence of a sufficient amount of water. The complete absence of any one of these conditions will suppress germination. Of these three conditions, water is the most exacting factor. Too much water is just as bad as too little. The soil should be moist without being saturated; and this is where good drainage is necessary, as it is only in badly drained soils where the water content can be too high. SOWING Many failures are probably due to sowing too deep, particularly if the soil is on the heavy side. It must be remembered that the potential energy stored up in the seed has to push the tender seedling up to the surface. Once through the surface, the seedlings should be given access to sunlight so that the foliage can function in the natural development of the plant. Before sowing is is w’ell to give the drills or bed a thorough soaking with water, and after sowing cover the bed or drills with fern or other light brush, so as to supply a little shade, and prevent surface evaporation. LIGHT AND GERMINATION It is usual to shade seed, particularly small seed, sown in boxes, as sunlight has a retarding effect on the germination of most seeds, while it hinders the sprouting of some, such as larkspur and poppy. Of course the shade should be removed as soon as the seedlings have shown their first true leaves. The times taken for different seeds to germinate vary enormously for the particular seeds. Seeds of the mustard family may take well under a week. Most vegetable seeds may take from one to three weeks. The parsley family including carrots and parsnips are slower than most; while some shrub and tree seeds may take over 12 months.