CHINESE GARDENING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5267, 9 February 1878, Page 6 (Supplement)

CHINESE GARDENING.

The question has been raised, says the Queenslander, that the vegetables from Chinamen’s gardens are not equal in quality to those raised in a less forcing manner. The direct effect of their system is practically similar to that upon plants grown in a hot steamy atmosphere. Where it is necessary to the perfection of vegetables, such as cabbage, turnips, carrots, peas, beet, &c., &c., that they should develop sweet particles, sugar in fact, then the products of the Chinamen’s are not equal to those grown by the slower but more natural process. The great rapidity of growth, and abundance of moisture and manure, lead to the secretion of 9, larger proportion of water in the vegetables of the Chinese ; hence the complaints that “they boil down to nothing; 1 ' that “ha’f-a-dozen of their cabbage are not equal to two from the garden of John Smith or Hans Schneider,” have a proportion of fact. But when it is added that the vegetables of the Chinese are unhealthy, the statement is absurd. Our belief is, that were it not for the supplies during the prevailing dry weather from the Chinese gardens, there would be a serious increase of diseases attributable to lack of vegetable food, and that it would be much the better course to adopt those portions of their system that enable them to succeed, rather than spread misstatements that alarm, although they have no foundation in fact. .For fact it must ever remain, that no matter what style of cultivation is employed, culinary vegetables cannot, under any circumstances, take into their composition matters that are injurious to human life ; that is, unless undue quantities are consumed. For some sorts of vegetables, as lettuce, cress, radishes, and others, the Chinese system of continuously wet is the best that can be adopted. It produces a crispiness in the vegetables that is obtained only when there has been no check to the growth. But the main points of the question are whether these Chinese gardeners are to monopoly all the trade, and whether it is not possible to so far adopt their system as to make it suitable for white men. We believe that it is quite possible to accomplish all that the Chinese system accomplishes, and at .a much less expenditure of labor than is used by them—that, by the use of horse, steam, and wind power, white men can surpass the Chinese in market gardening even in this climate. But, to accomplish that, a system shall have to be adopted that differs essentially from that hitherto followed.