24 OCTOBER 1941, Page 13

In the Garden The vegetable garden is now, for the

moment, more important than the flower garden. Put in the last batches of spring cabbage ; dig up beetroot, carrots, early-sown turnips, the last potatoes, storing the first three in sand, or clamp them all. Earth celery for the last time ur last time but one. Earth leeks ; leave parsnips where they stand. Get the place reasonably, ship-shape, so that in wet and frosty weather there will be no need, in that excellent Midland expression, " to mortar on." The season for lifting commercial sugar-beet is Novem- ber ; but don't forget the inland revenue snag if you propose to make a little home-made beet-sugar. In the flower garden there are two simple choices: tidiness or untidiness. There is much to be said for the second: the fawn, bronze and tobacco browns of the dying michaelmas daisies, the scraps of late colour, the tits and finches trapezing on the wands of silver seed. The tidy gardener misses them all. The untidy gardener can always retire to the greenhouse and see, in the chrysanthemums, the solid returns of a little summer investment—perhaps the loveliest flower-harvest of the year.