TOMATOES LOST

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 170, 21 July 1941, Page 2

TOMATOES LOST

KILLED BY FROSTS

GROWERS' HEAVY LOSS

Heavy damage to early tomato plants in low-lying districts around Auckland is reported as a result of last week's frosts. Many thousands of plants scorched by the cold snap in unheated glass houses at Otahuhu, Mangere and Avondale will have to !be replanted, and even in houses provided with oil lamps there has been considerable damage near the outer walls and in the corners. Rarelv have growers for the early Auckland market suffered such a severe blow, according to authorities in the city. In some houses up to 1500 well-established healthy young plants went off as if scorched by fire, in a landscape mantled in white the temperature in the houses fell sharply below freezing point. This occurred on several nights, and the sunny days which followed the frosts were poor compensation for the luckless producers. It-was sudden death to plants which in a few weeks would be bearing their first clusters of young fruit, to ripen for the October market. Replanting will mean a setback of about a month. Not only is theie the loss of the plants and the October market, but the growers have in addition the extra labour cost involved in starting a fresh crop, it was stated, however, that a somewhat similar experience some years ago had made .the most experienced cautious, and probably they had a reserve supply of plants suitable for replacing at least some of those destroyed. In heated greenhouses, and in the most favoured localities, growers have been more fortunate, but it is expected that when reports come in from districts like Pukekohe, where tens of thousands of plants are raised for the first outdoor crops, it will be found that this nursery stock, like the early potato crops, has suffered much damage. Tender plants and trees have been affected in varying degrees, both in orchards, nurseries and private gardens, where tree tomatoes, teeoma hedges, gerberas, lilies and potatoes have been severely scorched. Market gardeners refer to the present fine spell as "Fleet Week conditions." a term which originated when the United Stated Fleet was here in August, 1925. To-day, however, they have had to take the bad with the good, and while the unusual spell of sunshine has come nearly a month earlier than normally, it has been accompanied by mid-winter temperatures reminiscent of the Waikato. Sunny days and absence of rain enable growers to push ahead with cultivation and other operations, but one authority said this morning that there was not much scope for varying the seasonal rotation in response to conditions like those now ruling.