EXPERIMENTAL MAIZE GROWING AT LEVIN.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 31 January 1911, Page 2

EXPERIMENTAL MAIZE GROWING AT LEVIN.

•Some newspaper editors are the peculiar caro of their subscribers, and we must say that in Levin there are quite a number of subscribers who have kept this particular writer well supplied with vegetable garden growths and garden, monstrosities; new forms :and varieties of fruits; palatable new honey, and other deleotables. As .late as yesterday, one aged friend waxed wroth because we wanted to present him—

from out our own ■ garden—with some slightly attenuated red beet in return for his offering of wellgrown and fathearted cos lettuce. "It is 'better to give than to receive," the quoted; but in the meantime matters are hung nip between him and us pending the issue of pourparlers. Probably there are more vegetable and fruit gardens in Levin than, in any other town along tlio West Coast; and some of them arc being coaxed along in most unlikely looking corners. The back yard of The Chronicle loifice, for instance, had some promising patches of "mealies" wihieh were burgeoning heauteously for several recent weeks under the care of our South AfricanEnglish reporter. Then, one sad day, an energetic, bustling express driver, freighted with heavy "insets" about a draper's summer sale, ran a wheel over the garden and broke down half the crop!

Experimental science as applied to maize culture, was the undoing of the remnant of the Chronicle crop. Our reporter, to test his original theory that seidlitz powders contained fertilising mineral salts, treated the remaining half of his garden with the contents of one blue packet—or was it a wTfite on<e? —and within three days experimental science had garnered in several more victims for her lengthy list Our reporter, however, is undismayed! He is now taking .lessons in intensive gardening from our JiiioItyper, whose pujmpkin patdh iin Queen street is a pleasant picture in pale green and yellow, tricked out by surroundings of seasonable flowers and untrustworthy sparrows. The

pupil, if he prove as adept as tiio tutor, .assuredly will teach a pinnacle of fame on the height*.of vegetable culture. We write tins advisedlv, having before us at present a sample of the extraordinary lengths t«. wbich a vegetablewill Ins vines to rro in the matter of specialised production. Abnormally elongated and sawlv-groen, this ■particular rentable marrow lies .sturdily on OU r table-a testimony that the Inst linotypor has honours quite apart from' his keyboard, and the editor prospective joys far removed from bis sanctum.