CHILDREN HELP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 197, 20 August 1940, Page 5

CHILDREN HELP.

iSOWING - VEGETABLES.

BAY OF PLENTY SCHEME.

Enthusiastically supported by educational authorities, school officials, parent© and school children alike, a project has been inaugurated In the Bay of Plenty which should materially assist in the growing of foodstuffs as a war effort. The scheme provides for children in that area mowing in their own home gardens this season three-quarters of ja million onion plants and over 401b of !carrot seed. This is estimated to projduce some 60 tons of onions and oier 100 tons of carrots.

Explaining the scheme, Mr. G. L. Zinzan, agricultural instructor for the Auckland Education Board in the Bay of Plenty, said that the idea arose out of the children's long-established home garden scheme. When the vegetables are grown, he said, they would either be sold and the money given to the patriotic societies, or 'the vegetables given to those societies to dispose of as thev wished.

| In either case, it was a patriotic gesture on the part of the children. The scheme had been taken up with great enthusiasm by all concerned, and particularly by the parents. About KM J -chools from Opotiki and Rnjnrua in "lie south to Morrinsville and Paoroa in the north, wouV be concerned. Each school would receive from merchant.; their own requirements, and then each child at the school would receive 209 onion plants and a loz of carrot seed.

He said he had circularised the principals of the different schools, suggesting the plan, only to meet with immediate support. In 1938-39, only G74 acres of onions were planted in New Zealand, and owing to labour costs, and a likely shortage of labour this year, it was hardly probable that in the "normal * greater acreage would be wi«n. The effort of the cb'Hrcn tliould h# doubly wclcome.