GENERAL GARDEN NOTES FOR APRIL 



BY WM. HUNT, ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, GUELPH. 



VEGETABLE AND FRUIT GARDEN. 



1"^ HE first opening operation in the vege- 

 table garden should be to attend to 

 the asparagus bed. No garden, however 

 small, where any vegetables at all are grown, 

 should be without a small plot, or a row or 

 two of asparagus plant. It is the earliest, 

 best, and most wholesome and acceptable of 

 all early vegetables. If you have no aspara- 

 gus in your vegetable garden, sow some 

 seed as early as the ground can be worked 

 in drills an inch deep ^nd three feet apart. 

 Two year old plants planted eight inches 

 apart in the same width of rows as before 

 mentioned gives quicker results than by 

 sowing seed. Make the asparagus bed en 

 the deepest, richest, best piece of land you 

 have, where the water does not stand In 

 winter or early spring. If you have an .;'- 

 paragus bed take off the covering of manure 

 it should have received in the fall, and fork 

 the soil over lightly around and about the 

 plants. Do this as soon as frost is out of 

 the ground and the ground fit to work. 



The first crops to sow or plant in the gar- 

 den are peas., spinach, lettuce, parsnips, 

 parsley, leeks and onions. A little snow or 



frost after the seed of these is in the ground 

 will not hurt them. 



Beans, beet-root, salsify and carrot seed 

 should be sown a week or two later, whilst 

 vegetable marrow, squash, melon, corn and 

 cucumber seed should not be sown out in 

 the open until about the third week in May, 

 or later if the weather is cold. Never sou- 

 seeds when the ground is wet and soddened. 



Parsnip and parsley seed particularly rtre 

 slow in germinating, often taking four or 

 five weeks before growth commences. 



All small fruit pruning should be finished 

 up early in April, or before if possible, es- 

 pecially gooseberry bushes, as they break 

 into bud early. Grape vines should also 

 be pruned early, March usually being the 

 best month for the operation. 



If the strawberry patch was mulched m 

 the autumn the mulch should be taken off 

 about the second or third week in April. 

 Fork the ground over lightlv around the 

 phnts just as the bloom buds are showing. 

 Leaving the forking over until this date is 

 preferable oftentimes to doing it earlier, -'s 

 summer weed seeds that germinate about 

 this time are easier destroved than'bv hoe- 



