THE VALLEY’S OLDEST INDUSTRY

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 251, 20 July 1938, Page 6

THE VALLEY’S OLDEST INDUSTRY

Market Gardening May Vanish From District

NO OTHER SUITABLE LAND NEAR WELLINGTON

With the acquisition of market-garden-ing properties for housing, and the existence of a Government proclamation for like properties over other large similar areas, the gradual disappearance of the oldest industry of the Hutt Valley from the district appears to have begun. Some of the Hutt gardens land has been cropped for 70 years. It is recognised as the finest tomato-growing country in New Zealand. It has the particular quality of growing tomatoes without hard centres, With consequent benefit to the Hutt growers in the markets. There are 150 major market gardeners in the Hutt with an average holding of ten acres; no fewer than five acres is required for one man to make a living. The industry in the Hutt, as elsewhere, employs more men per acre than any primary industry—approximately one man to four acres.

When market garden produce was first taken to Wellington from the Hutt, there were mud tracks where there are now paved roads, and the trip took four to five hours by two-horse express drays. It is impossible to begin market gardening further up the valley. The land suitable for thia purpose ceases around the Taita churches. Upper Hutt district is unsuitable. For instance, a variety of rose will bloom six weeks earlier on the Lower Hutt side of the Taita Gorge than in the Upper Hutt district. The area in which market gardening is so successfully carried out in the Hutt is practically frost-free.

The only areas suitable for market gardening'and within easy reach of Wellington appear, from experience, to be toward Otaki and Levin. There market gardening has been an industry for many years. An expert stated to “The Dominion” yesterday that most of the essential knowledge acquired of climatic and other conditions in the Hutt would be useless to those setting up business again in a new’ district. The building of houses on market garden land was, in his opinion, wrong, when there was ample room for development in areas such as Khandallah, Johnsonville, and Tawa Flat, which now had first-class transport facilities.