THE AMATEUR GARDENER

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1808, 29 November 1919, Page 3

THE AMATEUR GARDENER

GARDEN CALENDAR.

DECEMBER. Average rah .fall, 2.12 in, Under Glass. Pot off seedlings and pot on the more advanced ones. Keep cinerarias, calceolarias, primulas, and cyclamen in a cool frame, •hading from hot sun, giving plenty of air day and night. Finish thinning grapes, and keep the laterals stopped. Tie up and keep the laterals rubbed ofT tomatoes. Plenty of ventilation will be required in all greenhouses and fruithouses. Outside. Stake and tie up all plants requiring support, and keep the garden tidy and the paths clear of weeds. Lift bulbs as soon as the foliage has turned brown, clean, and replant or store in a cool shed. Continue to sow culinary peas and French beans for succession. Another sowing of runner beans should be made. Keep up a succession of salad plants by sowing often in small quantities. Plant out broccoli, cauliflower, giid cabbage. Cease cutting asparagus. #eep the Dutch hoe constantly at work.

THE VALUE OF THE HOE. The most useful tool in the garden during the summer season is the Dutch, or push hoe, as there is no fetter means of encouraging the growth of plants and conserving the moisture in the soil than by surface cultivation. But at the same time it must be used with discretion and with regard to the purpose for \vhich it is being employed. By the means of the hoe the rising soil moisture can be stayed at the right depth which will best serve the purpose of the plants. To hoe deeply among shallow-rooted, or small seedling plants, as should be done amongst carrots or parsnips that have penetrated the ground to a considerable depth, would be harmful in the extreme, as it would check the moisture below where most of the roots were. With newly-germ-inated seedlings the barest loosening of the surface would be quite sufficient, deepening the tilth as the {oots extended downwards. When loeing among such surface-rooting filants as lettuce, from one to two nches will be ample, but with all tap-rooted plants the soil should be maintained in a loose condition to a depth of 4in. The same conditions are to be found in the fruit garden and the flower garden too. In the former, strong rooting trees as the apple, pear, etc., should have a good deep mulch of loose soil above the roots, but to attempt this with the currant, raspberry and gooseberry, Which are quite surface-rooting plants, would De very ill advised. The better plan to conserve the moisture about these plants is to mulch them with short manure, and then the hoe can be used with advantage between the rows. In the flower garden the same advice applies. A loose mulch of soil three or four inches deep about the rose bushes or where deep-rooted perennial plants are growing would be quite right, but to work the ground as deeply among shallow-rooted Wants as stocks, lobelia and most of the # annual plants would not be to their advantage. In the vegetable garden anv spare ground that has been cleared of a crop, or is being held over for a future planting, should always have the surface kept loose. For this purpose the wheel hoes, such as the Planet .Tun. are excellent. It is too often thought that these hoes are only useful for destroying weeds, put where the surface of the soil is kept in an efficient state of cultivation, weeds will be verv little in evidence. It is very rare "in the Christchurch district that the rainfall is sufficient to carry a garden through the season without having recourse to the hose or the watercan, and v these are not alwavs used

[By "AOTEA."]

with judgment. Very often their use results in more moisture being drawn from the soil than is added to it. The reason is that, after watering, the surface is not loosened up with the hoe.

No doubt the endeavour to economise labour has brought forward manv tools of the character of the wheel hoe, and one of the best of these is the Geneva. Although a light handy tool it is of strong make, and of practical formation, and combines three tools in one, a hoe, a cultivator, which can be regulated as to number of tines, and a small drill-plough. Any of these implements can be put into action by turning two thumb-screws. As surface cultivation is of so great importance in obtaining the best returns from the soil, the following from a writer in "Small Gardens for Small Folk," is so excellentlv and interestingly put that it is worth quoting: "Way down in the soil for a great distance there is moisture; it is where Mother Nature stores her spring and fall rains. The sun is ever drawing that moisture out of the soil, especially in midsummer during a drought. At such times the soil will become as dry as powder for a great depth, and, of course, plants cannot grow strong and husky then. How does the sun get that moisture? you are wondering. Through tiny, chimneys in the soil, onlv they are so close together and so small we cannot see them with the naked eye. There are the poor little plants with their roots among those chimneys and the moisture coming up from below (for, like smoke, it goes up the chimney), but it goes by them so fast thev cannot get any of it. But we'are going to help our plants by keeping that moisture just under the surface where the roots can use it; we arc going to put a brick over everv chimney so the moisture cannot get out. Now you think I have set you a taskl Remember, these chimneys are teeny-tiny, and a grain of dust will fill the top. But the sun is ever pulling and making new ones so we must close these as fast as they form. Well, we are going to cultivate. That's what farmers, good farmers, are always doing, and, do vou know, the funny part is they I think they are just keeping the weeds down, and don't know they are closing the chimneys and keeping that fine cool soil moisture for the roots. Now you have learned one of Mother Nature's secrets, and she has no end of them. She is a wise old lady, too, for she does not tell her secrets to those who do not ask her, and sometimes we even have to tease a bit to learn them." Remove Spent Flowers.

Flowering plants, where seed is not required, are encouraged to make stronger, freer and more floriferous growth if the spent flowers are removed before seed is formed. No matter how profusely a plant may flower, the energy applied is in very small proportion to that required to bring to maturity a crop of seed, and, where this is not wanted, it is wasted energy that could be diverted to the better purpose of increasing growth and the further production of flowers. The removal of the spent flowers and flower spikes of such plants as roses, rhododendrons and sweet peas is verv desirable. Not all roses or rhododendrons will form hips or set seed capsules, but most of them do, and it is remarkable what a few maturing seeds will do in retarding a plant's growth and checking the successional production of flowers.