THE GARDEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26214, 26 July 1946, Page 9

THE GARDEN

Contributed by D. TANNOCK, A.H.R.H.B.

ANSWER TO CORRESPONDENT “ Perennials,” Lawrence.—Now is the time to lift and divide up all kinds of herbaceous perennials. Do not cut them into pieces with a spade or knife, but pull them apart with two hand forks. Spray your fruit trees with caustic soda, lib in five gallons of water, for lichens and moss and with lime sulphur for scab. Some people dust their trees with lime, but it is not so effective as spraying. SEASONAL WORK The weather lately has been most favourable for work in the garden, and there will be no excuse for not getting it neat and tidy and free of weeds for the spring display. The garden looks better in the spring than at any other season, for there is plenty of colour in the shrubbery, the borders, and the beds, and there is nothing past its best and untidy. The soil is in good working order, and all pruning, painting, digging, and spraying can be carried out with advantage. THE FLOWER GARDEN The spring flowering bulbs are peeping through the ground, and it will be an advantage to weed them and lightly to fork in a dressing of bone dust or superphosphate. The polyanthus are commencing to flower, and as birds are often destructive it id a wise precaution to protect them with a few strands of black cotton, about which the birds are suspicious. It is also advisable to protect the carnations and pinks in the same way. The rose pruning can be completed and the roses sprayed with lime sulphur 1 in 12. After top-dressing with lime, blood and bone or bone dust can be lightly dug or forked over the beds and borders. Carnations, pinks, pansies and violas can be planted ■as edgings or among the roses, for the two kinds of plants get on very well together. Though it is better to plant the hardwood cuttings in the autumn, wellripened young tvood of the roses, from 6 to 12 inches in length, can be put in now with every prospect of rooting. The wood must be of last season’s growth and well ripened. Only strong-growing varieties will provide this. The dividing and replanting of herbaceous perennials and chrysanthemums can be carried out (though I prefer to grow young plants of the latter from cuttings), and antirrhinums, sweet peas, calendulas, and any of the hardier or the bedding plants can be planted. A batch of gladioli can also be planted, and the hardly annuals sown. Keep the soil lightly’ forked up among the anemones and ranunculus, and give a dressing of blood and bone or dry fowl manure. The plants on the rock garden and on rock walls will be showing colour, and a sharp lookout should be kept for slugs on mat plants such as aubretias, alyssums, arabis, and mossy phlox. Watering with lime water or dusting with some of the proprietary slug destroyers can be carried out. Newly slaked lime is as good as anything for plants which do not object to it. GREENHOUSE AND FRAMES Where there is a little artificial heat, cuttings of chryanthemums and perpetual flowering carnations can be put in as they become available, the carnations in pure sand and the chrysanthemums in a mixture of sand, leafmoulds, and loam in equal parts. Where there is no heat, it is better to delay putting in these cuttings for a few weeks. Pelargoniums and geraniums should be in their flowering pots, and any shoots which are growing out beyond the rest can be pinched to keep them back and to obtain shapely plants. Bedding geraniums, both the zonal and the ivy-leaved, can be potted up into 3in or 4in pots, and when established they can be put out into a cold frame to fee hardened off gradually. Seeds of all the half-hardy bedding plants, with the exception of zinnias and salvias, can be sown now, as well as sweet peas, tomatoes, self-blanching celery, garden peas, broad beans, cabbage, cauliflower, and lettuce. This is done in order to get a few early plants, which, if brought on in frames and gradually hardened off, will gain several weeks on plants raised from seed sown in the open. , , Tuberous begonias and gloxinias can be taken out of their pots, or the soil in which they were packed for the winter, and placed in boxes of light soil to start them into growth. Give one good watering. Afterwards a light spraying overhead, when the soil becomes dry on top, will be all they need. Seed of tuberous and fibrous rooted begonias, gloxinias, and streptocarpus can be sown, and as these seeds are very fine they have to be handled with great care. The greenhouse should be gay with primulas of various kinds, cinerarias, and perpetual flowering carnations, and calceolarias, schizanthus, and hydranges should be coming on. THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

The present is a busy time in the vegetable garden, and all spent crops should be cleared off and the ground dug up and left rough on top until required for sowing or' planting. Early varieties of the various vegetafeles can be sown now. These are varieties which mature in a shorter time than the main crops, but of course, do not provide as much food. They are Epicure, Jersey Bennes, Catriona, and Arran Comrade potatoes, English Wonder, Foremost or William Hurst peas; Egyptian turnip-rooted beet, Early Horn or Early Nantes carrot, round or summer spinach, French Breakfast radish, and Early Snowball or Early White or Red Milan turnip. On a warm and sheltered bed in the open Flower of Spring or Winningstad cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and Early London cauliflower can be sown to provide plants to put out later on.

Shallots, garlic, and artichokes can be planted at any time now, also cabbage and cauliflower, tree and potato onions, chives, and seakale. Rhubarb can also be planted now at four feet apart. Just cover the crowns with soil and then mulch with strawy stable manure. Strictly speaking, no leaves should be pulled the first season, but a few in the early part until gooseberries are available is permissible. \

Asparagus beds, which were prepared by trenching and manuring in the autumn, can be planted now, the plants being placed at 18 inches to two feet apart in drills nine inches deep and 12 inches wide. The plants should be set on a litle mound of soil with the roots spread evenly all round. Fill In so that the crowns 'are three inches deep Asparagus seed can be sown now to provide plants for putting out next season. Asparagus is sometimes sown in little groups on the beds where the plants are to grow, but the best cultivators do not recommend this. No shoots should be cut the first year, and only a few at the beginning of the second season. Onions raised from seed sown in the autumn can be planted out in well-manured and deeply cultivated ground. Care should be taken to keep the base of the’ stem just under the surface. The plants will probably fall over at first, but they will soon pick up and start to grow away. Autumnsown plants are more likely to ripen off properly in the autumn than those raised from seed sown in the spring. THE FRUIT GARDEN The pruning of all kinds of fruit trees vines, and bushes should be carried out by now, and after raking up and burning all prunings, mummified fruits and leaves, the trees should be sprayed with lime sulphur one part In 10 or 12 of water for all kinds of fungus diseases. These are mildew and black spot on apples and pears, pocket plums on, plums, and leaf curl on peaches. For mussel scale on apples and pears spray with an oil spray at one tn 10 and spray raspberries with arsenate of lead as the buds begin to show green Gooseberries and currants do not require any spraying, but as birds are very hard on the buds of the gooseberries it is advisable to stretch some strands of black cotton from tip to tip of the branches to frighten them off. For moss and lichens, spraying with caustic sode, lib in five gallons of water, is recommended

After the spraying, give a dusting oi blood and bone manure or a mixture made up of two parts bone dust, four parts superphosphate, and two parts nitrate of soda. Lightly fork it in, but on no account dig round the trees and bushes with a spade. Young shoots of black currants and gooseberries, about 12 Inches long, can be put in as cutings. In the case of the gooseberries all the buds should be removed except the three top ones, but all can be left on the black currants