HORTICULTURAL NOTES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4749, 2 May 1900, Page 3

HORTICULTURAL NOTES.

(By E.R.) The season is not opportune to write of -" beautiful gardens." The heavy rain in the early days of last week and the severe frosts that accompanied its closing nights played sad havoc with the glories of our gardens and left a general desolation. And now we have nothiDg left to admire in these dreary, drizzling days and we cannot hope to have anything until " the springtime oomes again." Our «' beautiful gardens " are reserved till then if we ever see them again, and this depends very largely upon the anioant of preparation we make for them. The sudden change of weather that last week brought ub warns us to make haste with the preparation we intend to make. .There will come a few fine days in a little while and we mußt make the most of them by olearing up the general wreck that " Jack Frost " has made. Full out your frost-bitten annuals, out off your devastated dahlia foliage, and if you intend to leave the tubers in the ground through winter, make provision to keep them as dry and free from frost as possible. If you have a convenient place to store them, lift them some fine day, expose them in the bud, and see thai they are thoroughly dty before putting them away. Make divisions of whatever clumps .of herbaceous stuff aro too large or likely to become so and shift whatever wants removing from one part of the garden to another. It ought to be too late in the year to tell you to gat in your spring bulbi, but I met a lady a few days .ago who had not yet done so and, on the chance that there are others in the game position, let me say : Get them in at ones. It is not, of course, too late, but early planting is always the best. The most extensive grower of narcissi in the district finished re-planting several weeks ago, and in this respect keeps in the company of the beßt growers in the Home land. lam ' reminded, whilst I am writing this,that some months ago I Baw several clumps of daffodil iralbs lying on the surface exposed to sun and weather in a garden I visited. They were probably thus neglected because they were nothing more than the common double ; bat I felt gony for them all the earns. It Is » fatal ttifitake to fcreafc jout bafts like this. Whilst you will get in all such bulbs as hyacinths, narcissi, ixias, tulips, crocus, etc., you need not hurry with anemones and ranunoulas. If you plant them some fine day six weeks hence you will be quite early enough. They germinate quickly and grow rapidly in their early stages, and if » planted now the youwg and tender foliage will be above ground when the frosts are severe or the snow is with us and they will fare badly. Keep them indoors in a roomy cardboard box and they will be .perfectly safe. If you store them in a cell** or some similar place they are likely to go mouldy or damp off. It is an advantage to make a Bowing of sweet peas now, and as the experiment has been tried and proved to be highly successful by more than one grower, I should reoommend it. Indeed, when I say that the first and second priises at oat lust Midsummer

will need no recommendation from me at all. A good style of treatment for these lovely flowers is to dig a trenoh from 4in to 6in deep and plank the peas in it, just slightly oovering them at first and gradually filling it in as the young plants grow. Many growers of sweet peas make a mistake in allowing their flowers to seed too early. If you pick your flowers, and keep on picking them as they bloom, you will keep them in bloom for months. Sweet peas are not the only flowers that thus reward you, and these flowers are deserving of more noti^Pand attention than they generally get.