Growing Vegetables In The Tropics

How to Operate a “Raised Garden”

(By R. R. Hanselmann, of Madang, New Guinea.)

RAISING vegetables in the tropics, I fear, has harvested more despair and failure than anyone can realise. Often, I have wished that a Luther Burbank would come to our assistance. But, maybe, if we all exchange a few ideas on gardening we all will profit. In this sense, I wish to tell you of Raised Gardens.

Although our station is only a little over 1000 feet above sea level, and we once could raise vegetables only during the favorable season, we are now able to have them all the year round.

On posts, two and a half feet above the soil, I have beds made of old sheet iron for the bottom, with a rim of eight-inch

boards. This box, filled with fertile humus, shows marvellous results.

Cattle-dip, or kerosene, sprayed on the posts occasionally, keeps all insects away, that usually destroy the seeds in the ordinary garden before they sprout.

The temperature of this raised soil cools off considerably faster during the night, and is from three to four degrees lower than that of the earth. This brings a heavier dew on the plants, and gives a crispness to the plants that is startling.

As those beds can be kept near the house, any spare moment can be given to the nursing of the plants, and watering is simplified with a hose from the water tank.

On my beds of over 400 square feet I have raised more vegetables than the family could consume—radishes, beetroot, carrots, kohlrabbi, cabbage, parsley, lettuce, to the size we had them in the States. This picture of seventy-two cab bage plants, on the raised garden, ought to be good proof for any sceptic. Plants in the earth, from the same packet of seeds (of course, with a little less attention) brought very scanty results. People on the beach have experimented with these raised gardens, also, and have had good results.

If anybody wishes to give it a trial, let him be sure to give his box a little slope,

to drain the excessive moisture. Do not shade it too heavily; neither place the shading material too low over the soil.

The width of four feet is practicable for working the gardens.

From beds, filled with virgin soil, I have raised three good crops, then refilled the boxes. No doubt, home or commercial fertiliser would aid materially.

This Raised Garden idea is, in fact, nothing new, for it is the same as having boxes used for nursery beds on the veran dah, only on a larger scale, and left to mature. And we all recall how well the plants did in those boxes until trans planted.