38 



IRISH GARDENING. 



MARCH 



Current Topics, 



By E. KxowLniN, F.R.H.S., Secretary, Roy.il Horli- 

 cultural Society of Irelaml. 



HERE'S a prelly how-d'y' do " said our familiar 

 friend when straining- at the pabulum pro- 

 \ided by the W'oburn experimental planters. 

 Well, not a few find it hard to swallow, for, like a dose 

 of the wrong- medicine, it is both nasty to take and 

 bound to disagree; and we were beginning- to setiU- 

 down so nicely, too, after the nitro-bacterine explosion 

 at Wisley. That, indeed, was not so bad. In that was 

 no old established tenet of the great gospel of garden- 

 ing w'hich age could not wither or custom stale ; as a 

 matter of fact we were a little suspicious of that subtle 

 something which we could neither see, feel, smell, nor 

 hear, and the orthodox believers in the venerable muck 

 doctrine smile broadly as the}- again trundle out the 

 animal — Phew-! Comparisons are odorous. But to the 

 planting — er — er — beg pardon, shoving *em in — our good 

 apples, pears, plums, so conscientiously prepared for 

 us by the Paradise Stock Co., Ltd. It's all over; done 

 w-ith ; fizzled out, and we poor planters who took such 

 pains to spread out roots are now a foolish and forlorn 

 generation. We have all prayed w-rong, and frail is 

 our faith. Planting, save the mark ! w-ill now be done 

 by anjone who is qualifying for an old age pension, and 

 can "bowk" out a hole two sizes too small for a tree 

 three sizes too big for it. Shove him in ! Double up his 

 roots ! It's of no consequence, thank vou, as the im- 

 mortal Toots would have remarked. But what have 

 practical planters to say to all this? That is the point, 

 and surely they of all men have woes enough without 

 this Woburn worry. Truly it is a hard nut to crack, 

 yet the fact remains that the hardest nut is often minus 

 a kernal. We don't say this is ; somehow- we don't seem 

 to know where we are, but— next from Woburn, 

 please. 



Relevant to New Zealand flax as an industry we 

 note that at a meeting of the County Down Committee 

 of Agriculture a report from the flax sub- committee 

 (Irish Times, Feb. 8th) states that "... all efforts 

 put forth seem to have failed to improve either the yield 

 of the flax or the quality of the flax crop. " That sounds 

 sad ; still, it w-as rather nice to find by the same report 

 that up-.i'ards £3,000 of public money is available for the 

 flax improvement scheme in Ireland. "Upwards " of 

 iJ3,ooo ! Dare one suggest to the flax improvement 

 schemers that the " up'ards " should be devoted to the 

 Phormium, leaving the big lump for the Linum — if its 

 worth it. This seems to be not only an industry on the 

 wane, but difficult to explain why. We have been 

 talking to one who reminisces on the good old davs of 

 flax farming, and in comparison with which it seems 



now- to be fast going to the d dogs. Prices now- 



appear appallingly low- to what they were then ; owing 

 to the manufacturing development of other things to 

 compete with it, that, perhaps, is the cause, perhaps 

 not, and it might be worth while for our W'oburn friends 

 to let off a little of their experimental energy in this 

 direction. 



That was a very handsome sample of flax leaves, bj- 

 the way, sent up from the Loretto Convent, Bray, to the 



last council meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society 

 of Ireland. As a matter of fact, we have never seen 

 Plwrmiuii: tenax in such form, but we are not quite 

 satisfied that it is tenax, and have ventured to add the 

 provisional name of horiles to it. It is certainly not P. 

 colensui, the so-called Powerscourt variety, and in habit 

 it seems somewhere between that and tenax ; but there 

 all comparison ends, for it is a noble flax, and the 

 clump from which the leaves were cut is something 

 over seven feet high. The specimen in question, which 

 must have been growing in its position for many years, 

 has not been known to flower. 



.■\nother current topic, pertaining to the higher ethics 

 of soil production, is the threatened nitrogen famine. 

 Do farmers and gardeners seriously realise what this 

 means? Well, it means that in a hundred years— or is 

 it a thousand? we are a bit hazy over this ; perhaps it 

 was a million, and to be on the safe side and leave no 

 margin for recrimination when it does arrive we will 

 say a million —in a million years there will be no nitro- 

 gen for love or mone\-, save in our aerial envelope, to 

 which it w'ill have evaporated, and the on\y known way 

 of getting it down will be to turn our old nitrateless 

 planet into a pea field. Twenty years ago there was a 

 similar scare about coal, w-hich w-as then calculated, to 

 the best of our recollection, to be just sufficient for two 

 hundred millions of years ; or was it two millions ? 

 These figures are a bit of a bother. Whichever it was, 

 twenty years have gone out of it, and the big scare then 

 ought by all the law-s oi logical deduction to be bigger 

 now. We are certainly a heedless race, barring the 

 tribe of black diamond traders who are coming to the 

 rescue bv a liberal seasoning of slates to spin out the 

 supply in spile of our callousness. This is merely 

 mentioned as being an old bogey thai is only scotched, 

 not killed, and it might have been settled before this 

 new nitrogen worry came on us. However, to our 

 nitrogen nut. One reads, and it is chilly reading, that 

 the great nitrate fields of Chili are getting played out, 

 and, of course, there is nothing new under the siui, but, 

 in all seriousness, can anything be lost ? 



No. I. — ". . . in the district between Carrick-on- 

 Suir and Waterford there are at least 150 acres under 

 willows, but the price realised per acre is so small 



that it would hardly pay for the cutting of the 

 osiers." 



No. 1. — ". . . I can confidently say that the growers 

 I have bought from will have at least £^ profit per acre 

 after cutting the crop, and the crop in most cases 

 doubled by proper attention, and the willow would be 

 more valuable. " 



Here are currents in conflict. No. 1 is from the 

 departmental source ; No. 2, a swirl from the backwash 

 set in motion by the Industrial Development .Association 

 i-c'ide reporl of latter, fris/i Times. Feb. I7lh). .As we 

 no longer use the willow for hanging our harps on, what 

 position does it hold oris it likely to hold as an industry 

 for us? .All that appears left when adding these con- 

 flicting views together and dividing them by two is a 

 warning to Waterford to be war)- or it may find employ- 

 ment staring it in the face. 



