As I Hear... SPUDS AND PEACHES

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30937, 18 December 1965, Page 5

As I Hear... SPUDS AND PEACHES

(By

J. H. E. S.]

T HOPE to be forgiven for x returning to the subject of potatoes. My reasons for doing so are good. What 1 said some time ago brought me a letter from an old pupil who, since he was with me in Adams House, the Christchurch Boys’ High School hostel, bridged a gap of 40 years. Silly fellow, he thought I must have forgotten him. Have forgotten the most brilliant of schoolboy caricaturists? Have I not somewhere in my archives the original of a sketch showing the masters’ seven-a-side team going on to the field, alongside a concrete building conspicuously marked GENTLEMEN? There is the captain, George Lancaster, whose peculiarly sharp nose is beautifully caught; behind him, Laing, short and tubby, charmingly realised in his most genial aspect, undisguised by the helmet and earflaps of a lock; behind him Hercus, immensely tall, and wearing the expression of one who regards foot-

ball as just another of the human activities tending to be immoral and subject to censure; and last, Rudolf Davis, the school caretaker, comically dwarfed and distorted. And in between am I—yes, I am—tall and graceful, with my nose in the air! And my boy thinks I may have forgotten him. . . . But revenons a nos pommes de terre. My wellremembered old boy wrote to say that for many years he had grown potatoes for show and for sale. Having read my comments on the virtual disappearance of some varieties and on the faults of those that have displaced them, he wondered if I realised that the market is served by commercial growers, who have two standards. First, they grow for top crop per acre. (Yes, I did understand that.) Second, they grow varieties which concentrate the tubers in a small area under the haulms instead of spreading them wide, and so minimise the damage caused by machine diggers. (No, I didn’t understand that. But “minimise” is the word; for I find plentiful evidence of damage in the potatoes I buy. Thank goodness, I shall begin to lift my own in a fortnight and have some months of pleasure in eating new potatoes.) This good chap has sent me a small cargo of Catrionas and of a variety he brought back from a trip to the United States, a Vermont potato, I guess; and I look forward to raising it. As for Catriona, which I cannot find here, I really ought to have said that I grew this as an early. Let it mature, and it boils into those “balls of flour” which I reprobate but which once were mightily praised as such. (It delights me to find that a colleaguegardener. once such a praiser, has come round and now scorns his old “balls of flour.”) ♦ ♦ #

A ND second, an old friend, noting my word about the disappearance of King Edward VII, has sent me a parcel of seed potatoes of this variety. How she has preserved this strain I cannot say; but the nicely sprouted potatoes look like the real thing to me, and 1 hope to lift an autumn crop to prove it. Which reminds me that, years ago when (as I am fond of saying) I farmed in Opawa, a friend and neighbour, also a crazy gardener, called on me on New Year’s Day and found me planting the remainder of my seed potatoes. “What!” said he. “Yotfre planting potatoes? Far too late! You’ll never get a crop!” I said I’d rather take a chance than throw them out; and in April I had the pleasure of taking him a basket of wellgrown, shapely new potatoes. This man had free access to Lincoln College supplies of animal manure: cow, sheep pig, and so forth. He could not resist the temptation to bring in loads of this marvellous stuff and dig it in. I think he ruined his garden by over-feeding it. His peas, for example, grew prodigious haulms but cropped poorly; his tomatoes fell victim to every sort of disease and cropped poorly; his celery flourished enormous tops but the blades were coarse in texture and flavourless. It used to give me a secret joy that my poorer ground, much less generously fed, used to produce more abundant peas, plentiful healthy tomatoes, and crisp, fine celery of unsurpassable flavour. As Great Unele Samuel Johnson said. “There are few more

visible scenes in the comedy of life than those of the reciprocal civilities of authors.” Perhaps only those of the rivalries of neighbour gardeners. # # # A WEEK or two ago I visitbed Hawke's Bay and, for the first time, was driven widely about the country beyond Napier, to which my previous visits had been pretty narrowly confined. I was charmed by this flourishing country, so rich in orchards, which I love. I noticed large areas planted in young trees. One evening, at dinner, one of my hostess's guests said that orchardists must have a limitless expectation of the market for their fruit, since they were steadily planting new areas. I remembered my old pupil, the potato-grower’s, word about the dominance in these affairs of the commercial grower; and I remembered having read, in a book by some expert, that peach trees throw their maximum crop at about nine years, when the crop declines though the quality may improve. Consequently, the commercial grower will cut out his trees at nine or 10 years and plant new ones. This is perhaps one of the reasons, apart from premature picking, why it is very hard to buy a perfect peach. I used to get my friend and old pupil, G.M., who flourished the fiercest and most un-

profitable bat Canterbury ever knew and moved into the produce auctioneering business, to lay by for me trays of Otago peaches and apricots; and these were often superb, picked at the right time, carefully packed, and sped to the market. Thanks, George. But here I have no George to save me from half-ripe, bruised fruit. * * * TN THE same week as I heard from my old pupil, the potato-grower, I met Miss Mayo, the lady who was the subject of an article, recently, in the Women’s Pages of “The Press.” Something in her look made me ask if she were related to Joe Mayo—“ Joe" being familiar for Josephine an old colleague on the “Sun” and “The Press.” She was, in fact, Joe’s elder sister. I have referred to my old pupil’s gift for caricature. It was such as, I would say, promised him a future like David Low’s. Joe used to draw delightful illustrations to accompany comic verses I wrote for the “Sun.” When she moved to “The Press’ this side of her talent was eclipsed; but she emerged as a cartographer, whose maps made the war news of the paper the most intelligible in the country. But Joe, so far as I could make out in a few moments, has not driven her talent; and my caricaturist grows potatoes. I can't help shaking my head.