THE GARDEN ROUTINE WORK

Southland Times, Issue 25550, 19 December 1944, Page 8

THE GARDEN

ROUTINE WORK

By

RIWHI

The following are tasks for the flower garden: Transplant seedlings of wallflowers and other biennials into nursery rows. If sowings of biennials were not made late in‘ November there is still time to sow, provided the work is done immediately. Keep up surface cultivation among the rapidly growing annuals. Plants for late displays can still be put in. Where the garden is to be left during the holiday season it is essential that it be in perfect condition before Christmas. Staking and tying should be in advance of present needs; not a weed must be left; mulches of lawn mowings or light compost should be placed along rows of sweetpeas and gladioli. In the vegetable garden the planting of winter greens, leeks, and celery should be completed before Christmas. This is most important, especially in Southland. Keep the hoe going regularly up and down rows of vegetables of all kinds. Complete all final thinnings. Put in a last row of peas and successions of lettuce, spring onions, and butter beans. Lose no time or opportunity of building up the compost heap, remembering that a variety of material is preferable. See that runner beans are staked to a height of seven feet. Where marrows begin to flower cross pollenate. Keep tomatoes to one stem and increase the water supply only when fruit begins to set. GARDEN PESTS This is the continuation of last week’s article. Three methods of controlling gardefi pests have been briefly described: Spraying with poison sprays, with contact sprays and with oil sprays. A further method of attack is the use of fumigants, such as horticultural naphthaline, carbon bisulphide and calcium cyanide. Lime sulphur, nicotine sulphate and kerosene also act to a certain extent as fumigant sprays. Economic considerations restrict the use of fumigants. Horticultural naphthaline, for instance, can be used only on a limited area as a soil fumigant. In this way wire worm or grass grub can be controlled on small plots, in glass houses or on compost potting soils.

All of these methods of control are artificial, but natural controls of far greater consequence have been developed recently as the result of scientific research. These, while not exterminating the pest altogether, keep it from reaching epidemic proportions, and provide a method that can be applied to extensive areas where the use of any of the artificial controls would be altogether impracticable. In this way the white butterfly has been put under control, at any rate for agricultural purposes; the golden oak scale has been conquered, releasing the oaks of Canterbury from a certain sentence of death; the American woolly aphis has ceased to menace our orchard areas. Such natural biological controls, using parasites, are fundamental and safe and destined to play an even greater part in future pest control. There is, however, a principle that goes deeper still. Healthy fertile soils make it easy to grow healthy plants and crops. Thorough cultivation, drainage and freedom from rubbish and weeds will confer, if not immunity, then stout powers of resistance against many pests and diseases. Pest infested materials should never be composted, but should be burned. Crop rotations are helpful, but not always expedient or really effective in the small household garden. Clean gardening on healthy fertile soil places the gardener on the offensive. The use of chemical sprays is always purely defensive with the pests attacking. In the next article the topic of plant diseases will be dealt with.

BAND RECITAL.— A programme of marches, selections, Christmas carols and Maori melodies was given by the Battalion Boys’ Band at Queen Victoria Hospital on Sunday. The playing of the 32 members, under the conductorship of Lieutenant A. McMaster, was of a high standard and was thoroughly enjoyed by the patients and visitors.