COSTLY CABBAGES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8481, 9 July 1907, Page 7

COSTLY CABBAGES.

CAULIFLOWERS A LUXURY,

' .*Every dog has his day.; and apparently so does every vegetable. Just now it is the turn of the cabbage and the cauliflower, and these homely edibles fen flaunt their heads on a level with the aristocratic asparagus, for they are in small supply and big demand. The cabbage is expensive and the cauliflower a luxury. They are selling at prices which have probably not been reached during the past five and twenty years. At Wellington, on Saturday, Messrs Laery and Co. sold a well-graded line of cauliflowers at 35s 6d per sack, and cabbages at 13s a sack. What this moans is shown by the fact that the average price is 8s and 3s 6d respectively. Talking with a member of the firm„a Post reporter gathered that the scarcity is due to the phenomenally dry season—although it seems ironical to speak of a drought with rain teeming down. A continued spell of dry weather is disastrous to the familiar green vegetables, for it brings in its wake • a deadly parasite which works wholesale havoc amongst the young plants. This has been-the case this season, the bulk of the crops in a large portion of the North Island, and South as far as Canterbury, having been ruined. Nine-tenths of the vegetables sold in the Wellington Produce Market come' from outside, mostly from along the Manawatu line, and as the South Island has practically none for export this season, the supply is almost cut oil. The shortage is having a noticeable effect on culinary operations, especially in hotels and boarding-houses. Proprietors refuse t-> pay extravagant prices, and boarders with a weakness for the succulent green vegetables have to submit to disappointment, and try to fill the aching void with the übiquitous potato or the tender turnip. With the advent of spring, however will come the new crop of cauliflowers and then prices will drop to their normal level.