A NO-SOIL GARDEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 151, 29 June 1938, Page 14

A NO-SOIL GARDEN

FOOD ON DESERT ISLAND (From "The Post's" Representative.! VANCOUVER, June 8. Wake Island, in the Pacific, 19 degrees north of the Equator, until three years ago uninhabited, and devoid of all but the hardiest forms of vegetation, is now the scene of one of the 1 most unusual gardens to be found any- • where —a mid-Pacific experiment in ! the new science of hydroponics.

The gardens, which are a group of ] boxes, filled with chemically-treated water, in which a wide variety of crops are flourishing, were designed by the University of California to supply vegetables to the personnel of Pan-American Airways and the United States Navy at Wake Island, which is of growing significance in American defence in the Pacific. The agrobiologist in charge of the experiment, Larnory Laumeister, who successfully overcame a series of initial handicaps, now finds, like President Roosevelt, that one of his chief problems is crop control. Many plants tend to flourish too abundantly, growing to stalk and leaf too rapidly, and to fruit too slowly, as a result of the extraordinary light intensity of the Wa.te latitude. This over-generosity of tropical sun is being combated by new combinations and additions to the chemicals used in the water gardens. The experiment has led to one of the most important possibilities which has yet been offered by hydroponics, viz., that the taste and quality of the fruits and vegetables produced by this newest branch of agriculture can be controlled. u Mr. Laumeister has produced garden truck" of many kinds, including lettuce, beans, carrots, squash, (corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes, using the same original supply of fresh water. Lately, he has put In water a crop of melons, pineapples, and papaws. He says he expects also to grow strawberries, out of season.