FARMER AND GARDENERS CALENDAR FOR THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER.

Southland Times, Issue 1025, 21 September 1868, Page 2

FARMER AND GARDENERS CALENDAR FOR THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER.

♦ Mean temp. 48°, corresponds to March, in . England, mean temp. 42° . Kitchek Gakden. — This, like the month of March in our mother couutry, is the busiest in the whole year with the gardener, for upon the strictest attention to the duties of this month depends the supply of six more, at least as regards cropping, and also the whole routine of garden operations. In the kitchen garden full crops of pease and broad beans should now be sown ; it it difficult. to recommend. sortSi as a kind that will do well in one place will not do so in another, bu f . the best at present known are Bishop's long pod dwariito be sown in drills two feet apart, and Veitch's perfection, to come on in succession, which must have three feet between the rows, as they grow four feet high; the taller kinds must have six feet from drill to drill. Sow main crops of short horn and long orange carrots at the middle or end of the month. Plant full crops of early potatoes, summer cabbages, Cape and Walcheren broccoli, also lettuces. Sow lettuce, mustard, cress and radish. Sow spinach between rows of broad beans, or in a bed by itself. Sow a small breadth 6f stone white turnip, but this sowing cannot be depended on, as it may run to seed. Put up a hot bed for general purposes, in which to raise cucumbers, melons, and any tender annuals that may be required to cultivate, sowing the various sorts sepera k ed in pots or boxes. Asparagus beds, if not done last month, should now have their surface stirred up with a short tined fork^ and the earth well broken, to allow the young shoots a free growth. Fbttit and Flower Gabden. — In the fruit garden grafting should be attended to and finished this month, but in should be borne in mind that peaches, nectarines and - cherries do better budded. The process of grafting is performed hi several different ways : one is to take the graft and pare it down on both sides till it forms a wedge-shaped end about an inch long, then with your knife, or what is better a fine- toothed saw, cut off the stock straight across, then put the edge of your knife on the centre of the stock and split it down about an inch and a-half, and on one side of this split insert the graft, so placed that the bark of both stock and graft fit exactly level ; another way is to draw off only one side of the graft like a pen, then cut down your stock, and cut upwards so as to form a small tongue, on the bevelled or cut side of your graft make a slit upwards, then fit the one into the other, taking care that the bark of each fits perfectly on one side ; in each case the graft and stock must be bound firmly but not too tightly together, and, if above the surface level of the earth, the whole covered with clay well wrought with horse droppings ; if below the surface level, cover with i a. small mound of fine mould, which is the best way. Never graft a tree until the sap begins to move In the flower garden the borders should all be neatly raked, the grass verges cut, as also the edges of all flower beds upon .lawns ; standard roses and other plants requiring it should be staked and neatly tied for the season. Make up all vacancies of the various flowering plants from the nursery beds made in the autumn for that purpose. AIT kinds of hardy annuals, such as sweet peas, lupines, mignionette, colhnsia, nemophylla, Clarkeia, onothera, convolvolus, and a great many others ■ may be sown about the middle of the month. Cuttings of geraniums, fuschias, heliotrope, &c, should be taken and set round the edges of pots, and placed in the hotbeds to strike root, so that they will come to succeed the annuals as they die off.