19 DECEMBER 1941, Page 10

In the Garden In winter, when other salads are difficult

to grow without heat, it is a desirable habit, where possible' to keep a box of cress

or mustard and cress by the kitchen door, that the cook may cut what she wants without waste. Cress is the best form of salad in winter, and it is easily and quickly grown, though not

all people do it in the best way. The seed should not be buried at all nor should it be watered. The finest possible soil should be on the surface and all watering should be done some while before the sowing. A sheet of glass over the box is advisable throughout the period, which is rather less than a fortnight for the mustard and rather more for the cress. A very successful experiment or two (one by an expert at Girton College, Cam- bridge) has persuaded the critics to advise a winter sowing of culinary peas. It is recorded by a very suggestive gardener in the Estates Magazine that peas sown under cloches in December have yielded full pods in the -kollowing May, an astonishingly early date. However, most of us would be wiser to content our- selves with broad beans. I do not remember to have seen them grow better than during this December. May they and the wheat not prove " winter-proud." W. BEACH THOMAS.