THE GARDEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18071, 8 January 1921, Page 10

THE GARDEN

IMPROVING GARDEN SOILS. Green manuring is effective both in sandy and on heavy clay soils, and, indeed, on all soils deficient in humus. On sandy soils the effect of green manuring is to consolidate the soil, the humus formed binding the particles together. On clay soils, the effect of the addition of humus and the production of carbonic acid is to loosen and aerate them. When conditions as to warmth and moistures are favourable, and the crop decomposes fairly rapidly, the production of soluble plant-food proceeds with considerable rapidity. This is especially the case in respect of nitrogen, which is the principal manorial ingredient. Nitrification (that is, the conversion of the nitrogenous material of the plant into soluble nitrates) takes place quite rapidly. In sandy soils, green manure nitrifies more rapidly than manures like dried blood, bonedust, etc., and only less slowly than ammonium sulphate ; while in stiff clay soils the green crop nitrifies very much more rapidly than either sulphate or ammonia or animal manures. GARDEN manure. The value of stable manure as an addition to garden lands is well known to experienced horticulturists. All types of soil are improved by it, with the exception of peaty or humic soils, which are already soured by an excess of organic matter. In some garden soils, which have been under cultivation for many years, and regularly manured year after year as a matter of course, a condition is ultimately reached approaching that of the peaty soils above referred to. In such cases fresh applications should be with- i held, and the acidity corrected by a dressing of lime. The beneficial results obtained from the use of stable manure cannot be wholly ascribed to the mineral manorial ingredients it contains, for these are very small, and applications of artificial manures containing equivalent amounts of mineral food would be followed by practically negative results. Yet long experience and many exhaustive experiments have shown that largely increased yields have been obtained from soils heavily dressed with stable manure as long as thirty years after such dressings have been discontinued. GROWING SHALLOTS. This small member of the onion family is esteemed for its mild and delicate flavour, and also for the ease with which it is grown. Shallots are propagated by sets or small bulbs, which increase to large clumps in the course of a season without requiring any particular attention. After the ground has been dug deeply, as for all onions, it should be made fairly firm and the little sets pressed into the ground so as to just cover them. In the course of four or five months the set will have developed into a bunch or cluster of longish, narrow bulbs. Quite a large number can be got. off a small plot of ground if the rows are made a foot apart, and the sets 4in to Gin apart. When ripe the tops begin to wither, and they should then be lifted and spread out io dry before storing. STORING ONIONS. Onions, when pulled, should not Be stored away at once, but should be left on the ground for a few hours to dry. Then they should be put away in the coolest shed or barn available. They require constant looking after to sort out any .bad ones, for, as in the case of fruit, such as oranges, apples, pears etc., a single rotting onion will infect all those in its immediate neighbourhood. It used to be the custom, and probably is to this day in the good old-fashioned farmhouses in the Old Country, to hang onions in strings to the kitchen rafters in com pany with hams, flitches of bacon, etc. This hanging in strings is a good plan where it is only a case of keeping a few for home consumption, hut in the case of many tons the labour entailed would not be re compensed by the profit. METAL FLOWER POTS. When kerosene tins and meat tins je used as flower pots it is generally for purposes of economy; probably none of our readers have ever looked upon them as in any way superior to the much neater and more orthodox earthenware article. There is, however, much food for thought in what a correspondent of the London Field writes on the subject. He has for some time being us.ng metal pots for forcing, strawberries and begonias under glass, and gets much better results than with earthenware, and he also prefers tins to the usual pots' for growing tomatoes in. The superiority of metal, he believes, is due to there beng no evaporation through the pots. This is quite a new idea, as the porosity of earthenware has hitherto been regarded as its chief qualification for pot making. But one has only to think of the terracotta water “monkeys” so popular in the East, and the canvas bags so commonly used in Australia, to see the point of tne argument. Evaporation is always accompanied by loss of heat, and in these cases it is employed to cool the water contained in the vessels. The loss of . water through the porous material is a price that is paid for the cooling of what remains. In the care of the flower pot, however, what do we gain i by the loss of moisture and ensiling of the soil? A cool rooting medium, • but it is some purposes an ad- - vantage, but it is obviously a check ' to growth, or why do we use bottom : heat A simple test made by the • Field writer was to empty the con- • tents of a metal and an earthenware ' pot respectively into his hand, when > he found the ball of soil in the first L quite warm, and in the other cold. ’ For certain kinds of indoor work the - metal pots have the additional ad- , vantage of maintaining a drier at- - Biosphere, thereby reducing the - trouble with fungus diseases. Al- - ready a metal pot has been patened r in England; it is made of galvanised i sheet steel, with a wire rim and bot--1 tom which is dished or convex on the i inside. Those of our readers who t value utility mor e than appearance - may now use their empty meat or i fruit tins as flower pots, in the full i knowledge that the idea is scientiflt cally sound.