VEGETABLES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4522, 12 January 1942, Page 8

VEGETABLES

THE TE AWAMUTU GARDENER Te Awamutu gardeners who have spent the “ summer ” watching their vegetable patches gradually wilt and disintegrate will have read with grim levity the Price Tribunal’s remark thai “ it cannot urge too strongly that people should be encouraged to grow their own vegetables.” It is probable that more vegetables were planted by householders last spring than for many years past, for prices were then unprecedentedly high, and most people in a position to grow for themselves took this means of attempting to reduce the drain on the family purse. Unhappily the season has been retarded and extremely bad for many varieties of garden produce—particularly so for tomatoes, marrows, pumpkins, and beans; and home industry, instead of alleviating the community shortage, has been heavily handicapped, and in some cases to a large extent wasted. Te Awamutu gardeners are, however, are long-suffering and tenacious creatures. Their instincts, together with the well-chosen words of she-who-shops-for-vegetables, keep them “ at it ” in the hope that winter crops will be better. If the Price Tribunal’s recommendations result in gardeners getting more and better advice from gardening authorities, well and good. But the individual gardener will require little urging in the future—and deserves even less blame for what has happened in the immediate past. His trouble has been not so much horticultural as meteorological.