There is no busier time of the year for a gardener, and though hedges and ornamental deciduous trees require trimming, shrubs and bushes staking and tying, though gladioli and hardy biennials wait to be planted and perennials to be divided, it is to the kitchen garden that all hands must be rushed.
The pruning of fruit trees must be finished ; potatoes must be put in-a labour of Hercules. Main crops of peas, Windsor beans, parsnips, carrots must be sown. Leeks along with onions-the young onions to be drawn for spring salads, the leeks to stand. Mustard and cress with a sheet of glass to assist germination ; radishes white and red ; early lettuce in sheltered corners. Then there are cabbages and artichokes to be planted out, night sentries of soot to be posted against raids by slugs, and a hundred and one other things requiring immediate attention.
Whether you're a head gardener with labour reduced to half a man and a boy through financial crisis at the Manor, or whether you're owner, gardener and boy yourself, you're lost without method.
This evening Mr. C. H. Mid dleton is to devote his talk to the kitchen garden-to method, sowing and planting, roots and seeds, soil and nourishment, protection ; in short, to all the things belonging to March.