Read on to see what gardening advice was being given back in November 1906. The advice was useful, technical and also rather moral as in “Better far put love into the home and garden than into the pint mug that makes so many homes wretched, and reduces so many gardens to that of the sluggard”. So, don’t be a sluggard, instead read on and see what jobs you need to complete this month.
Finish harvesting and storing potatoes and all other root crops. Frequently overhaul potatoes and remove any that are diseased. As the ground is cleared let it be heavily manured, or ridged up, or dug, or trenched, the surface being left as rough as possible.
Now is also a good time to scour ditches. Gather manure or other rubbish off the roads and mix it with the manure of pigs or saturate it with the house slops so as to make a viable compost. Run a hoe through the cabbages, winter onions and broccolis and see that no weeds get up in corners or out-of-the-way places.
Prune fruit trees, roses and grape vines on walls as soon as the leaves fall. Also thin the wood out of standards apples and pears that may be overcrowded. There is no gain but a serious loss in overcrowding them as a rule with leaves and wood too weak to fruit. Small fruits of equal weight will not bring one-half the money as larger and the thinner the trees are then the heavier the fruit.
Gooseberries and currants should also be pruned and all the prunings collected into faggots for the oven if fuel is scarce. If not, let the prickly prunings at once be burned and all the roots. Greens and other rubbish impregnated with weeds be burned with or by them, also a quantity of marl or clay. These fires of useless prunings will also provide a most useful heap of ashes, better than manure for many gardens.
Clear up the flower beds and borders, clean walks and roads, attend to the plants in the windows, and see that everything inside and outside the house has a cared for appearance. Better far put love into the home and garden than into the pint mug that makes so many homes wretched, and reduces so many gardens to that of the sluggard, so forcibly depicted by Solomon in the Bible. In the humblest as well as in the highest stations it is the “hand of the diligent that maketh rich” and also happy.
Plant apples, pears and cherries as early in the month as possible and protect the roots from frost-bite by tolerable thick mulchings of moss or litter so as to entice the roots to gain a fresh bite as soon as possible.
Sow in warm situation a row of First Crop or Ringleader Peas and a few Early Mazagan Beans.
