SEED SOWING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1941, Page 8

SEED SOWING

SOME USEFUL HINTS. Before commencing to plant or sow in the vegetable garden a plan should be prepared of the year's operations, so that the best use may be made of the ground available, and to ensure as far as possible a supply of vegetables of a varied nature throughout the season. Where the vegetable garden is sufficiently large it should be divided into five plots of about equal size, one being devoted to the perennial kinds, such as asparagus, rhubarb and seakale, and the other four to crops which are sown or planted each season. For example, No. 1 plot could be set aside for early and second early potatoes. No. 2 for root crops such as carrots, beet, parsnips, turnips, radish; No. 3 for pod crops such as dwarf, French and runner beans, butter beans, and peas, with inter crops of spinach and lettuce, and No. 4 for cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and silver beet. Winter greens such as broccoli, savoys and cabbage, with leeks, would follow the early potatoes when dug, and onions and shallots could be grown on the green leaf plot or portion of one of the plots set aside for the purpose, for they can be grown on the same plot year after year if necessary. By following a rotation of crops full use is made of the various available plant foods, and diseases which would attack potatoes, for example, would not attack cabbages’ and the various brassicas. In a small vegetable garden the rotation would have to be by rows instead of plots, but similar results could be obtained. At this season when seedsmen's catalogues are arriving it is advisable, as far as possible, to make out the seed order for the year and to send it on at once. When ordering an earlymaturing variety and a maincrop, one should be included, the former becoming available in a shorter time, but providing a much smaller 1 crop than the maincrop variety. There is a fairly wide selection in each section, and the following list is only suggestive, and can be varied according to the tastes of the grower and the stocks available. The selection will be found to be generally suitable for Masterton gardens. Broad beans: Early Long Pod and Harlington Windsor. Dwarf French beans: Canadian Wonder. Butter beans: Golden Wax and Burpees Stringless. Runner beans: Prizewinner, Empire, and Girtford Giant Scarlet. Beet: Egyptian Turnip-rooted and Crimson Globe. Silver beet: Swiss Chard. Kale: Dwarf Green Curled. Broccoli: Veitche’s Selfprotecting, Mount Cook, Late Queen, and Purple Sprouting. Brussels sprouts; Christie’s Model. Savoy cabbage: Green Curled. Carrot: Early Horn, Model, Altringham. Cauliflower: Early London and Veitche’s Autumn Giant. Sweet corn: The Country Gentleman. Ridge cucumber: Early Ridge and Early White Spine. Cabbage: Flower of Spring and Copenhagen Market. Peas: Blue Bantam, Coronation, Little Marvel and Stratagem. Celery: Golden Self-blanching, Chrystal (white), and Standardbearer (red). Khol rabi: Large Green. Leek: Musselburgh. Lettuce: Luxury and All the Year Round. Onion: Ailsa Craig. Parsley: Triple Curled. Parsnip: Hollow Crown. Radish: French, Breakfast. Spinach: New Zealand. Tomato: Sunrise and Kondine Red. Turnip: Early Milan, Golden Ball, and Laing’s Garden Swede. Marrow: Long Green. Potato: Jersey Bennes, Epicure, and King Edward.