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AUSTRALIAN GARDENING.
(To the Editor of the Age.)
SOWING AND PLANTING. — Provided you can ensure
good seed, I prefer purchasing it of a respectable
dealer, who procures it from a neighbouring colony,
or from a far distant locality, so as to give the plant
a different kind of soil to that on which the germ or
seed was grown. A well prepared cabbage nursery
is very remunerative to the cultivator, not only it is
far cheaper for him to grow his own plants, but the
space they take up is so-trifling that the yield is very
great if even sold at two shillings a hundred, inde-
pendent of which, from your own seed bed, you can
ensure an equality, in your plants, and that they can
be pricked in as soon as pulled up. Cabbages should
be planted in rows two feet asunder, and about
eighteen inches apart; the holes should be rather
large, and filled with water, and the earth pressed
close to the plant: where practicable, the plants
should be watered two or three times, and the even-
ing is the best time to prick the plants in.
The nursery beds should be a well-worked rich
soil, and after the seed is strewn over, which it
should be pretty thick and broad-cast, some fine
mould should be sifted over by a riddle, the squares
of which being about four to the inch; the ground
should be well watered every night and morning till
the plants are, up, and matting or tea-tree scrub laid
over to keep the sun from parching the ground up.
As the young plants are liable to die from various
causes, succession beds should be sown every three or
four weeks.
Seed, whether gathered in your own garden or
bought, is generally very dry, and this, coupled with
the excessive heat of the climate, frequently causes
a failure, and the seedsman is condemned as an im-
postor, &c., when virtually the blame rests with the
gardener himself; nature, as I said before, requires
assistance, and when the seed is too much dried up,
it should be soaked in watee a few hours previously
to its being sown, and the ground, whether sown in
drills, broad-cast, or dibbled, should be completely
saturated with water, which should be moderately
repeated every night till the plants appear above
ground.
There is a great advantage in drill sowing over
any other, which some people are not aware of, but
which all who have tried readily admit; letting alone
the facility the system allows of keeping the ground
clear, by forking between the rows fertilizers, top-
dressings, short rotten dung, &c., can be applied
which cannot possibly be done in the broad cast
system.
In very nice culture, and where labour and time is
not an object, when the drill is made, the following
day, compast laid at the bottom will be found to aid
and forward the seedling, and greatly invigorate the
young plant. Pulverized ashes, dry cow, horse, and
other dung mixed with equal parts in bulk of sand
and fine earth; after the seed is laid on this and
covered over, the whole should be well watered.
Carrot, parsnip, and onion seed, whatever may be
the general character of the soil, should always be
sown in sand, or sand mixed as above, onions perhaps
should have a redundancy of ashes.
JOHN GLYNDWR.
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