GARDEN NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17994, 12 April 1930, Page 22 (Supplement)

GARDEN NOTES.

SEASONALE WORK. (By “Nikau.”) Vegetables and Fruit. —Clear away all spent crops and dig the soil thoroughly. Sow lupins for green manure or else plant late leeks and any kind of “greens” available. Thin autumn sown crops of carrot, silver beet and lettuce. Sow onion, spinach, silver beet, lettuce, cabbage. Gather fruit as soon as it is mature. Flowers. —Sow all kinds of hardy plants, either in open garden or in boxes. Make the main sowing of autumn flowering sweet peas. Continue giving liquid manure to chrysanthemums and dahlias. Have covers ready in case of frost. Stake cosmos securely, as high rands may be ex-

pceied any time now. Weed out had dahlias while they are in flower, so that they may not escape for another year. Put in cuttings of roses and shrubs, also of soft-wooded bedding plants such as alternanthera, begonia, geranium, heliotrope, ageratum. (These will need a frame to protect them from frost.) NOTES. Gathering Fruit. —Though gathering fruit may seem to be the simplest thing possible, there are nevertheless certain points to observe. In the first place, when is fruit ready? No hard and fast rule can foe given, for certain varieties should be allowed to become almost ripe on the tree, while others need to be pulled some time before that. Naturally, fruit that has to travel a long way should be firm. This is true for plums, peaches, pern -. arid apples. As a rule, pears are U be picked when still firm, as they drop too readily if allowed to r°ri ain on th• tree; besides, they are exposed to birds if left in the garden. Fortunately they mature splendidly when stored. To test if apples and pears are ready for pulling, the following method should be adopted: Select a typical fruit and bend it gently backwards and upwards. If it parts easily, it is 2eady for picking. Generally the colour is a. fair guide. Another indication is supplied toy the number of apples falling; if many fall, it may safely be assumed that the crop is ready for picking. Uis still too early to pull Delicious, Sturmer and Lord Wolseley, but most other kinds such as Munroe’s, Cox’s Orange, Jonathan and Northern Spy are now ready. There are various aids to picking the fruit. If a bucket is used, an S book of strong wire should be made to hang the bucket to the ladder or to a branch of the tree. If the trees are not high, an apron proves of great service. A piece of strong sacking lj yards long and 30 inches wide should be made up into an apron with a large pocket something after the style of a bag for elothes-pegs, and large enough to hold nearly a bucketful of apples. The final point Is the most important: the fruit should be handled carefully—“like eggs,” as the saying goes. This is only a slight exaggeration of the care required. It is said by experts that the hard varieties bruise the more easily, as their tissues break, while the tissues of the soft varieties yield to some extent.

Storing Fruit. —The chief requirements are coolness, dryness, and free circulation of air. If the apples are not kept cool, they quickly part with I heir moisture and become shrivelled. It' they are not kept dry and allowed plenty of air, they are quickly attacked by rot-producing bacteria and fungi. An easy way of securing the above conditions is to make hammocks of fine-mesh netting and to store the fruit on these. Apples may also he spread out on a floor or In double •layers in boxes piled above one another. However the fruit Is {stored, the method should make inspection easy. Any fruit Hi at is diseased should be removed at once, before Hie rot spreads. If boxes are used, there should be cracks or spaces large enough to ensure the circulation of air. No paper should be laid in the bottom, as this blocks the air and allows the fungi to develop. Coltness Gem Dahlias. —Five or six years ago a sensation in the gardening world was caused by the introduction of the .'Collness Gem dahlia. This

was a dwarf with scarlet flowers, and authorities confidently predicted that this dahlia would largely take the place of scarlet-flowered geraniums for bedding purposes. Though the prediction has been fulfilled only in

part, there is no doubt that the plant is a good acquisition. In the last two years a whole series of hybrids has been raised. The writer has had a good deal of success with them, as all the plants raised by him from seed differed in colour. The disadvantage that became apparent was that the hybrids differed in height, and therefore lacked one of the" chief features of a bedding-plant—i.e., uniformity of height. With this exeeption the plants were really fine and kept blooming profusely until seed was allowed to develop. The range of colour is wide, running through many shades of /cd to yellow. There are whites also. Seed Time. —This is a good time to sow the seed of all hardy plants, as there is still enough heat to allow germination to take place surely and quickly. Another advantage is* that the seedlings will make a good deal of growth before winter. All the biennials and many hardy annuals do best when sown in early autumn. The following list is suggestive rather than exhaustive: —Antirrhinum, columbine,

stock, nemesia, larkspur, mignonette, and cornflower (these three in open garden), coreopsis, pansy, viola, Iceland and other poppies, Canterbury and other bells, calendula (marigold greatly improved), wallflower, carnation, thalictrum, gerbera (does best now, as seed is fresh), primrose, geum, gailtardia, hollyhock, delphinium, iris, sweet William, pentstemon, sweet pea, Argentine pea, kaka’s beak, various scabious (especially S. caucasica), dlanthus, sweet alyssum and Virginian stock (both for edgings), perennial forms of phlox and aster. Besides the three specially mentioned above as transplanting badly (larkspur, mignonette and cornflower) there are others which do best when sown in the open garden. If boxes and tins are used, they must have sufficient drainage holes. The soil should be specially prepared, otherwise it may cake too easily or, on the other hand, It may be too powdery and loose to hold moisture. A suitable mixture should be made rath ordinary garden loam, rotted leaf-mould or compost, and either wood ashes or sand to keep the mixture light. It is a good plan to water the soil before the seed is sown, and then to sprinkle the proper amount of soil after sowing. The surface Is not so likely to cake if this method is followed. To keep the soil moist and yet warm, a sack or other covering may be laid on the boxes. At the end of three days this should be removed, as some of the seedlings‘"will begin to appear on the fourth day, and shading would spoil them. Wheu the seedlings are a little over an inch high, they should be pricked out in boxes of prepared soil. If they are two and a half inches apart in the rows, they will have sufficient room to develop and be excellent plants for setting out in the beds and borders in early June.