PUMPKINS!

Wairarapa Age, 22 March 1920, Page 7

PUMPKINS!

AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION.

A speaker at the farmers' meeting at Carterton on Saturday gave a dissertation upon the cultivation of pumpkins, somewhat to the apparent! increduality of hia neighbours: j He stated that the majority of farmers did not know of the immense returns that a crop of pumpkins, properly cultivated, would produce., There was not a better food for stock. After, all his experience, he was inclined to stake his faith in pumpkin raising. • A farmer interjected that a portion of his property had been planted in pumpkins, and produced a splendid crop of vines. (Laughter.) "Then you do not know how to grow them," replied the advocate for pumpkins. He went on to state that they could be raised upon the poorest of land. His procedure was to trench the land in which he proposed to grow the pumpkins, and let it lie all the winter. The frosts had a most beneficial influence on the soil, and would sweeten the poorest of land by that method. Into the" .trenches he would throw all the ordinary farm refuse. The speaker stated that he even cut rushes and threw into the trencfc, and they made excellent manure. "Now, if you do that, you will have any amount of pumpkins," concluded the speaker.

"What abqut the frosts?" queried the interjector. . ;

"You might as well say the same about the maize. The frost has the same effect. Of course, I mean that the pumpkins should not be planted too early," was the reply from the pumpkin advocate. Still his confreres smiled somewhat sceptically, and the old adage concerning a prophet in his own country was again proven.