Gardening

TheReview Wednesday, July 4,1990 — A16

The time is ripe for tomatoes

I think Connie Rust gets the
gold medal this year for having the
earliest garden grown tomato. She
picked and ate her first one on
June 25th, and, I might add, she
pronounced it delicious!

I had thought that, for once, we
were doing pretty well... with a
number of nice tomatoes growing
on several plants (particularly on
those called Fantastic) but Connie
has us beat!

I got a very nice surprise the
other day while hauling hoses
around the front garden. The

. Heavenly bamboo (Nandina bam-
boo) which was winter killed two
years ago . . . remember that
terrible spell of frigid windy
weather that killed so many
plants? . . . anyway to my delight
new growth is coming from the
TOOts.

This seems amazing to me when
nothing whatsoever showed up last
spring or summer, but there it is,
about a foot tall, and looking very
enthusiastic about life.

We had a short visit with Reg
and Vi Teeney the other day, and
Vi asked what she should do about
the black-spot on the roses in their
yard. In theory one should pick off
every affected leaf, seal them all in
a plastic bag and send it off to the
dump.

This is what the kids call a
major much-job, very prickly and
unpleasant, and usually you don’t
get all the spotted leaves. Anyway,
salvage as many as you can, both
from the shrubs, and from the
ground under the bushes, then
spray with Funginex, which I pre-
fer to Benomyl.

The latter leaves a white residue
which looks enough like mildew
to give you a really nasty shock.
This spraying will have to be done
on a windless day when there is no
rain in the offing. We don’t seem
to be enjoying too many of those
so far this summer, do we?

It should be followed with
another spraying in about ten days,
continuing this treatment every ten
days until this miserable fungus

disease is completely cleared up. ~

During the summer, I find if
glass clippings are spread under
the rose bushes, making a thin

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layer each time (rather than a thick
one in a small area) they dry out
without becoming a sodden mass,
providing a mulch under these
shallow rooted shrubs, and helping

to smother the spores of black-
spot and mildew.

Do water your rose bushes thor-
oughly before spreading this
mulch, and an application of about
a cup of 6-8-6 or 13-16-10 spread
lightly under each bush, will com-
pensate for the nitrogen used up by
the decomposing grass. You will
only need to do this fertilizing
once.

Please don’t use grass cuttings
that come from a lawn treated with
Weed-N-Feed, which is poisonous.
You can use clippings after the
third lawn mowing, and, by that
time, be sure that they are harm-
less. Vi also asked about getting
new plants from strawberry run-
ners.

Strawberry plants will start
making runners as soon as they
stop bearing fruit (Gust about right
now). On the end of each vine a
small plant will form. Under each
baby you wish to save put a
soil-filled four-inch pot, and hold
the new strawberry plant against
the soil with something shaped
like a staple.

Cut off all small plants that
attempt to grow further out this
umbilical cord, and remove all but
one other runner from the parent

GILLIAN CHOO -
CAIB, ALLC.

soil. More on this later.

plant. These two infants will sap as
much strength from the adult plant
as it can afford if it is expected to
bear fruit next summer.

When your new plants are well
rooted, the cord attaching them to
the parent plant may be severed,
and these new plants tucked into
the soil between your present rows.

After young plants have been
rooted again next summer, the
oldest strawberry plants may be
discarded, the soil plumped-up
with rotted manure, and some
bone-meal, and these new straw-
berry plants put in where their
parents grew. (Grandparents,
actually!)

Linda called to ask why her
peonies had not flowered this
spring, nor last. After some discus-
sion we decided the problem prob-
ably stems from the depth that the
Toots were originally planted.

Peony tubers should be no
further than two inches under the
soil. In Linda’s case the sugges-
tion is to fertilize her plant now
with super phosphate (which
should encourage flowering next
year) then in the fall when the
leaves die back, that they be
removed down to soil level, and
the whole clump raised.

If she inserts a shovel well out
from the root mass, and heaves it

up, a mixture of well-rotted ©

manure, compost, bone-meal and
soil could be forced underneath.

If the same thing is done on the
opposite side the whole mass
should be raised to the required
level, and hopefully next year she
will have tons of flowers.

Linda should apply a dusting of
lime next spring, or even now. Her
peonies are situated near both
cedar and fir trees which will
almost certainly have caused an

acid soil condition. _
Hmmm, now I begin to wonder

-how close her peonies are to these
trees? They might be using up all @

the moisture and goodness in the

Harcourt reassures business

leaders of market system

NDP leader Mike Harcourt is
pretty busy these days reassuring
the private sector that an NDP.
government would do wonders for
business. An NDP government
would be both “pragmatic and
principled,” he told about 120
businessmen in Vancouver last
week.

The Socreds aren*t buying
though. A little sore that the NDP
is succeeding at creating the image
of a fiscally responsible party, they
insist that the leopard doesn’t

change its spots, and that the NDP &

would run up billions of dollars
worth of debts.

“T believe in the market system. Meanwhile, the Socreds’? own =
No-one can seriously question its reputation as a good fiscal man-
effectiveness in creating wealth ager was a little tarnished when
and prosperity,” Harcourt said.An the government got caught laying
NDP government, he added, claim to a balanced budget which
would also be strongly committed turned out to be far from being
to balancing the budget. balanced.

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