How to Grow Cauliflowers
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
in New Guinea
ALTHOUGH the New Guinea Highlands produce good peas, potatoes, beans, cabbage and other European vegetables, cauli flower culture has not been entirely successful. Yet in Fiji, in the dry season, excellent cauliflowers are grown—and down at sea-level.
A former agricultural officer of Fiji says that this is how it is done: • First, you import the seeds from Suttons, of Calcutta. • Secondly, you plant them in seed boxes or beds and as soon as possible you transplant them into rows, fairly close together. When the plants are about four inches high, you transplant them again, with wider spaces between; and when they are six or seven inches high you transplant them finally into their rows, about eighteen inches apart.
These shock tactics are called “vernalisation” (or something like that) and it agrees with cauli flowers. If transplanted once you produce cauliflowers about the size of a tea-cup—but those transplanted several times produce something that is large and white and family-sized.
Anyway, cauliflower-growers in the NG Highlands might like to try
out the idea.
JT.
Mr. and Mrs. O. Denny, of Lae, NG, were in Sydney in July.