A Good Buy

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 483, 24 September 1948, Page 8

A Good Buy

HAPPENED tp listen to 3YA reviewing the Journal of Agriculture the other day. A phrase on sowing from an article on the home garden in September caught my ear. "If the soil sticks to the boots when walked on, it is not advisable to sow." Surely a pleasant and revealing little piece. Note the word boots, Farmers wear boots; townies seldom do. Farmers are usually sensible enough to leave their boots outside the back door when the soil sticks to them, but the thoughtless urban gardener is always likely to create domestic friction by tramping through the hotise in his soiled footgear, leaving in his wake concrete examples of the unsuitability of the time for sowing. He really has no excuse. The Journal of Agriculture subscription is 2/6 a year, and the August number, the one reviewed from 3YA, had two hundred and twenty-four pages. There were thirtyfout articles, stretching from a sober, statistical graphed and charted review of farming in the South Auckland district,, through the Budding of Fruit Trees in Spring (the Jones method), Pullorum Disease (4 Heavy Burden on the Poultry Industry), and Improvement of Inherited Qualities of Breeding Pigs, to Lighter Jobs on the Flower Garden, Food Requirements For Health, Sauces Sweet and Savoury (the last two with enticing photographs), and bathroom design in the modern home. Twelve numbers like this for 2/6 is almost unbelievable, and I hesitate to make too much noise about it in case R. Van Winkle, obviously the senior ‘sleeping partner in the enterprise, awakes and puts up the price.