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GARDENING OPERATIONS FOR THE…

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GARDENING OPERATIONS FOR THE WEEK. (From the Gardeners' Magazine,) Kitchen garden requires now a general clearance of plots that have borne peas, beans, &c., to burn all the dry haulm and weedy stubble and fork over and put on manure if necessary all winter crops will do better in the ground well dug, even if not manured, than with a mere scratching of the surface. Where there is much demand for potting cum posts, the kitchen garden will supply useful material for the muck-pit, which is a more economical method in the long run than the burning of rubbish, though the latter is a clean and quick way to get rid of it, and the ashes are useful. Save all the soot that can be got to make a puddle for dipping the roots of broccolis, cabbages, &c., when planting out from the seed-bed, and store away at once all pea-sticks worth keeping, to preserve tidiness and prevent waste. Sow Early York, Battersea, Shilling's Queen, and Rose wort cabbage, Early Horn carrot, green curled endive, cabbage and cos-lettuce, turnips, and prickly spinach. Make ready the ground for winter spinach, the time for sowing being near at hand. Celery newly-planted will require abundance of water. Plant out as fast as possible, if any left in beds or pots. The fly has not seriously damaged the crop this season, and where it has not appeared there is now no further danger, and the late celery is likely to escape ltogether. Winter Spinach.—The time being at hand for sow- ing winter spinach, we are reminded of a peculiar failure of the crop which occurred to us a few years since. It may be worth while to state how this oc- curred. The ground was got ready in good time after potatoes, and was not manured. The spinach was sown as usual, and we had a splendid plant. But very soon after the plant was established, and the leaves were three inches long, they began to drop off sud- denly. On scraping away a little of the soil from the plants that were affected, we found that detestable thing the larva of the Daddy Longlegs, which always attacks plants at the junction of the stem with the roots. Experience taught us there was nothing to be done. We might have wasted money on gas-lime, or on searching out the grubs by hand, but we knew too well the folly of attempting to cope with this pest in a remedial way, and quietly suffered the plantation of spinach to perish, which it did in a rather summary manner. But a preventive process may be adopted. Let the ground be dug a little earlier than usual, and left rough for a week or ten days. Then cart in a good dressing of manure, and have the whole piece trenched, and the manure put in the bottom of each trench. The plant will derive no immediate benefit from the manure, which is an advantage for if we have a hard winter, it will endure the frost better than in poor soil. Y et the manure is not wasted, for in the spring, when the plant begins to grow again, the roots will have got down on the manure, and in the dry weather of March we shall see the spinach.producing huge fat leaves when other things are not growing at all. So much for the manure and the plant in their relation. You will now ask what about the vermin. Well, the first digging will expose the grubs and the robins, and blackbirds, and rooks—so fond of newly-dug or newly-ploughed ground-will pick them up by thou- sands. Then those that escape death that way will be either buried in the trench at the next digging, or ex- posed to the view of the birds to be devoured. Thus the ground will be well cleansed for a year, and will not want manuring in spring, for the spinach will not consume all the strength of the manure. When the crop is removed, therefore, a deep digging with a four- tined fork is all it wants to prepare it for any kind of spring seeds, whether green crops or roots. As for other matters, all we need say is, lay out the ground in four feet beds, sow in drills, and thin in good time to six inches apart. All sowings of winter spinach should be finished by the 15th of August. Flower Garden.—Geraniums should be propagated at once by cuttings put in the open ground in a sunny place, or singly in thumb-pots in frame or on a moist bed in a house facing south. If this work is postponed, the plants will be more difficult to keep through the winter. If quantity is an object, every two joints, one joint in and one out, will make a good plant but one joint will do very well of any variety it is necessary to cut hard, as to form roots a joint in the soil is not necessary, as the internodes will root nearly as soon as the joints. Carnations, picotees, and pinks to be propagated largely now from layers and pipings, both easy and certain methods. Pansies to be propagated from cuttings of young wood the old hollow stems are quite unfit for the purpose. Keep the cuttings shaded, and sprinkle fre- quently, but the soil of the cutting pans only moderately moist. Beds to be planted to stand over winter should now be deeply dug and manured, which will tend to reduce wireworm, as they will be turned up in the process and be destroyed. After the beds are made ready, set traps for vermin, and persevere to get the ground clean, as the losses in winter often arise through the eating away of the roots by marauders. Dahlias want a heavy mulch after the ground has been lightly forked. This is said to harbour vermin, but practically its few disadvantages are balanced by the superior health of the plants and the beauty of the flowers, and the labour of watering got rid of. As for earwigs, they always go upwards, and may be trapped with certainty. Roses may be multiplied by putting short cuttings, selected from the shoots of this season, in a bed of sandy soil, in a frame, keeping them shaded and sprinkled. Nine-tenths will root with ordinary care, and ninety-nine hundredths where the cultivator is quite au fait at propagating. Budding on brier and manetti stocks may be carried on. It is a good time to buy in new roses, and plant them, as they will be well established before winter, if taken care of, as to shading and watering, for three weeks after planting. Annuals for Next Season.—The finest show of annuals early in the summer is to be had only by autumn sowing. During the latter half of August and the first half of September is the best season to get them strong enough to stand the winter if sown earlier they get too forward, and are apt to suffer from frost. An open quarter sheltered from the north is to be preferred, and the ground should be as hard as flint. On this hard surface lay down a shallow bed of poor sandy soil, and on that sow the sorts in rows pretty close together, each marked with a good-sized tally. In gardens that are very dry or insufficiently drained, the plants will have a better chance if the bed is made to slope southwards this will carry off excess of wat r, and the plants will start better in spring. They are to be transplanted singly into beds, borders, ribbons, &c., as desired, as early in March as the weather will per- mit. The soil in which they are to bloom should be rich and well worked, and as every one of the plants will grow to twice the size ordinarily attained by the same sorts when sown in spring, they must be planted at double the ordinary distance apart. To make more sure, .it would be as well to sow at least one pan of each of the same sorts as those sown on the border these to be kept in a pit or frame and dealt with in the same manner for blooming. Some of the improved forms of hardy annuals are equal to anything we possess for brilliancy of colour and effect in masses for instance, Iberis Kermesina, a new crimson candytuft, makes as grand a bed as the finest verbena or geranium in our collections, though it does not last in its prime more than four or five weeks. The old Campanula speculum is a charming thing for masses, the rich bluish purple of the flowers being enhanced by the white eye. In- deed, all the established annuals are worthy of more attention than they commonly receive, and will repay for all the extra care bestowed upon them, besides which they are particularly interesting as botanical studies. The following are among the best annuals to be sown at once :—Calliopsis, Clarkia, Collinsia, Con- volvulus minor, Escholtzia, Godetia, Hibiscus, Dwarf Larkspur, Lupinus, Nemophila, Nolana, French Poppy, Schizanthus, Saponaria, Virginian Stock.

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