GARDEN NOTES

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22612, 18 May 1945, Page 6

GARDEN NOTES

(By "Nikau”)

VEGETABLES AND FRUIT Plant cabbage (both late, such as savoy, and early, such as Golden Acre, Flower of Spring, and Enfield Market) cauliflower, winter rhubarb, broccoli, borecole (hardy kale), silver beet, spinach beet, hardy lettuce, her us, shallot and potato onion. Sow in raised beds: Dwarf pea, broad bean, yellow-fleshed turnip, silver beet, cabbage (early varieties), stump-rooted carrot and *a hardy lettuce. Work the soil around growing crops, such as cabbage, cauliflower, silver beet, spinach and turnip; scatter a little general fertiliser along the rows. Scatter horticultural naphthalene over the foliage of carrots to keep the “ carrot rust fly ” away. Often in April and May crops which were previously immune are badly attacked. Weed and thin ■‘he crops sown in the last six weeks, except onions; these need only cultivation and weeding. Earth up leeks and celery on a dry day. Most parts of the garden should be limed every three years, but keep the lime away from lilies, rhododendrons, azaleas, heaths and kalmia. Turn in as much green manure as possible; cut it up and mix it with the soil. Plant strawberries now to let them become established before heavy frost comes to lift them out of the soil. Plant all hardy kinds of fruit-trees now, and send away the order for citrus kinds (if not too late already). FLOWERS Plant Iceland poppy, pansy, viola, stock, calendula, carnation, polyanthas, primula (malacoides), sweet pea, wallflower, Canterbury bell, sweet William, hollyhock and pentstemon. Sow in boxes, to be protected from heavy rain: Sweet pea, carnation, stock and late Iceland poppy. Sow in the open garden, if a sunny, well-drained bed is available: Calendula, linaria. mignonette and Virginia stock (for an edging). Finish the sowing of new lawns, and continue to top-dress old ones. Plant many lilies, also the last of the daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, freesias. lachenalias, crocuses, anemones and ranunculi. Plant roses, ornamental trees and shrubs. Put in cuttings of roses, hedge-plants, ornamental trees and shrubs, including many of our native species. TREATMENT OF MILDEW A reader of last week’s note on mildew says that a nurseryman in Nelson recommended that lime sulphur should be sprayed all over the diseased plants, in the evening. This would have the desired effect, with the certainty that the solution would not dry for some hours. A good instance was this: A huge -Dorothy Perkins rambler (notorious for its susceptibility to mildew) was cleared completely by the one thorough spraying with limesulphur, done in the evening. The same reader overcame mildew on delphiniums in this way. As soon as a plant was seen tc be infected it was pulled out and burnt, “to encourage the others”! Apparently the delphiniums needed only the one lesson, for only the one plant in the bed was attacked. As some seed was saved every year, a race of resistant plants seemed to have been developed, for the reader’s delphiniums never suffer now from mildew. BUSH FRUITS By this term we usually mean gooseberries, currants and raspberries, though it really includes loganberries, cranberries, new hybrids such as worcesterberry, boysenberry, dewberry and the old Japanese wineberry. Old ideas die hard—one, for example, is that gooseberries and currants do not grow well in the Auckland Province. For thirty years and more good gooseberries and currants have been grown in this part of the Waikato, especially in gardens with heavy soil. The one difficulty is to save the heavy crops from birds. Before planting bush fruits, enrich the soil with old stable manure or compost. Set currants five to six feet apart, or three feet apart if every second bush is removed in four years. Gooseberry bushes should be planted five to six feet apart, but standards or cordons need be only two or three feet apart. They do best when they get plenty of sunshine, but some of the currants, especially the black, appreciate partial shade. Gooseberries and currants are easily grown from cuttings put in during April or May. They should be about eighteen inches long, unless a standard is wanted; I in that case, a length of three feet should be taken. To prevent suckering and to produce a bush with a clean stem, remove the buds on the bottom twelve inches of the cuttings, except with black currants; in their case leaving a number of growths from below or just above the ground ! level is an advantage, because the fruit is borne on new wood. In the first year after planting out it may be necessary to shorten the cutting slightly, to induce some strong shoots to form. A point to notice about cuttings of gooseberry and currant (and of many other plants) is that the soft tip should be removed, so that only firm, healthy wood is left. SWEET PEA HINT As a matter of convenience in staking, sweet peas are usually planted in a row along a fence and made to stand up like soldiers on parade, but the best flowers, or rather the greatest quantity of bloom, will come from plants growing in the » open. The row may be straight, but a zigzag arrangement is quite effective. Another good way is to have clumps of sweet peas dotted about in big borders and trained on tripods or on cylinders of netting held in position by two or three stakes. Visitors to public gardens will have noticed such clumps in the Rotorua Sanatorium grounds, in Albert Park. Auckland, in the Christchurch and Wellington Botanic Gardens, etc.. Digging and manuring for the clumps will be the same as for plants in the rows. The seeds may be sown in the garden, but are better put in boxes, so that the seedlings will be five or six inches high before they are exposed to all the ravages of birds and soil pests. Even in the boxes the little plants are not quite rafe, for at times a snail or slug may reach the boxes. In frames and greenhouses there is the danger that mice will eat the seeds or the young plants. The writer has even found it necessary to put netting or black cotton over boxes to keep birds away from seedlings of sweet pea, lettuce and cabbage The boxes should be lifted from time to time and carefully searched for slugs, snails, woodlice and other pests.