OPENING TREE CONES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 7

OPENING TREE CONES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sis, —in your garden and orchard column recently it: was explained that in order to make all tree 00.r.e.s open and shed the seed all that was necessary was to place them in the sun. This only applies lo the small cones and gunt tree cones. The various pinus cones would not give sails- I faction, be a failure in fact, if tried this I way. The way I always did, and which I ! found a success, was simply to put about I a bushel of cones in a sack, and put it in I the I nker’s oven perhaps 20 minutes after tlie bread came out. In about a quarter of an hour they will be all open, and they open with a cracking noise. Several lots at one time could be done this way. This does not harm the oven in any way. The subsequent fire will put everything right if anyone thought it would deteriorate the oven, but it does-not. PINUS SEEDS. The cones are easiest knocked off the trees with a tomahawk. Sowing the seed i.s easy. Just leave a little area in one corner of the grain paddock, and give it several extra grabbings and harrowings, and then rake the clods off in rows, and sow seed in the smooth places between the rows of clods two or three to the inch. In order to cio this dilute a spoonful of seed at a time with one or two handfuls of fine soil, and you can sow the seed much quicker. T his also applies to garden seeds. You do not need to shelter the young plants from the sun. The first, autumn plant them out. If transplanted into well-ploughed and worked ground ir only costs id a tree. Any gardener knows how to do all this latter.— I am, etc., Richard Norman, Oamaro, September 12.