Gardening News & Notes

Northern Advocate, 13 March 1948, Page 3

Gardening News & Notes

Vegetables . . . From now on until the eni of the month is a good time for sowing onions for an early crop. Use a good clean well-manured, firm soil. Use fresh seed, gathered this season, if possible. Sow cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, winter or prickly seeded spinach, endive, raddish, turnip, parsnip, lettuce. Thin out seedling crops as soon as large enough to handle. Look over potatoes and onions in store. The potato moth is troublesome at this season. Pumpkins for storing should have a firm skin, and be easily picked. (Keep beans and peas picked as they are ready, so as to prolong the fruiting season. Don’t crowd your vegetables, particularly if they are to go into the cooler months when they will want all the sun and heat they can get. Plant a lew potatoes in a warm sheltered position for a late crop. Earth up celery and leeks as they require it. Sow soiling crops for digging m later. Also compost grass cuttings, clean soft wooded refuse, and animal manure. This operation is of first importance, as the resulting organic matter is the life-giving soil ingredient. When your peas and beans are finished, and provided the plants have not been affected by blight, dig them in, tops and roots. They will soon rot, and leave the soil with a better nitrogen content than when they were first sown. Then plant or sow foliage vegetables in the rows; spinach, endive, cabage, silver beet, etc,. Flowers . . .

' Chrysanthemums are late forming buds this season. Early varieties will have been disbudded. Late varieties should receive attention. With most varieties, one bud at the end of a stalk is enough. Growths appearing lower down on the stem should be removed. A few may be left if fancied for late blooms. Larkspur seed in the beautiful double pink and rose shades is back on the market, and will be in demand for cut flowers. Sow seed now and transplant into boxes, giving plenty of room between the plants, so that transplanting with plenty of soil attached may be done or seed may be sown in the open ground, and the seedlings transplanted when quite small. Plant narcissi, tulips, Spanish and Dutch irises, freezia, tritonia, babiana, sparaxis, anemones, Ranunculi, etc - Sow seed of antirrhinum, stock, Iceland poppy, primula malacoides, viola, pansy, nemesia, linaria carnation. Sweet William, larkspur, cineraria, ' The scarlet nerine is in bloom just now. The rose variety will soon be flowering, and later the pink and white varieties.

Some have large flowers, others small. All may be transplanted immediately after flowering. Keep the neck of the bulb above the ground. If you want your violets to flower well, you must keep the long runners, pulled, and keep the mound firm about the plants. Manure when the flower buds are showing. Petunias are easily grown from cuttings. If these are planted now in a sheltered, sunny comer, the plants should bloom in early winter. Label your dahlias now, as they soon stop flowering after a few cold nights.

Diamond-Back Moth . . This pest, commonly called the cabage fly, though not as conspicuous as the white butterfly, does much damage to plants of the cabbage family. The adult is rarely seen. It is nocturnal, hiding in the daytime; and the moth itself is not conspicuous. The grubs hatch out from eggs laid on the undersides of the leaves. They are much smaller than those of the white butterfly, being only about three-eighths of an inch long in the fully developed stage. They don’t bore right through the leaves as the grubs of the white butterfly do. This makes it harder to deal with them, as the dust or spray must reach the under sides of the leaves.

When disturbed, they drop from the leaves, suspended by a fine thread.

It may be noted that two parasites have been liberated in New Zealand, one to attack the caterpillars, and the other to attack the pupae. This does not mean the complete extermination of the pest, but rather, a marked reduction in its activities. Derris dust is a popular and easily auplied remedy. Red Spider . . .

This pest is active for the greater part of the year. It does not restrict its attentions to any particular plant. It attacks many garden plants as well as fruit trees; and violets, some shrubs, and many weeds, are also attacked. It extracts essential plant juices, and chokes the breathing pores of the plants with deposits of excreted matter. The affected leaves present a sickly yellowish appearance. The eggs are very small spherical bodies, which hatch out in a little over a week. The adult mite is very small, and frequently of a brick red colour. They are easily overlooked, and may- do much damage before their presence is known. . Tobacco washes and kerosene emulsion are good remedies at this season. Other remedies are lime-sulphur, and flowers of sulphur sprinkled on the leaves. Spray the undersides of the leaves particularly, as it is there that the mites gather in greatest numbers. Weeding and soil cultivation help by interfering with or destroying the hibernating quarters of the pest.