PLANTING

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; … they planted, they builded.

—Luke 17:28

4388 Mechanized Farming

Union Carbide is having great success with “Seed Tape”, a ribbon of polyoxide plastic containing seeds. Using a tractor mounted with a reel of tape, a farmer can plant a crop uniformly. The seeds are evenly spaced, and the tape dissolves when sprayed with water. This eliminates the costly problem of uneven planting, which often causes crops to mature at an irregular rate and forces farmers to reap several times. Carbide is now testing tapes that contain fertilizer or herbicides as well as a single tape that will have both seeds and fertilizers.

—Selected

4389 God’s Original Creation

It has been calculated that if all the available agricultural land on the earth was put to full use, it will easily feed a population of 140,000,000,000—about 40 times the world’s present population.

Even India grows enough food for her 600 million people. But 1/3 of this is eaten by rats in the process of storage and hoarding for higher profits.

4390 Tribute To Farmers

The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all to evil designs.

—Pliny The Elder

4391 Growing Vegetables Without Soil

Athens, Georgia (AP)—A self-educated Irishman who calls himself a man of the soil has developed what he calls a “garden of the sky” process to make vegetable-growing a city possibility—without soil.

Michael Dillon grows plants in towers that use air space rather than land space and an artificial supply of nutrients rather than soil.

Dillon just completed a 27-foot demonstration tower that houses 230 tomato plants. His objective is to produce a half ton of tomatoes in eight weeks on one square yard of earth.

A water and nutrient distribution system runs through the core of the tower; and the plants develop roots in a mixture of plastic compost, waste and shredded newspaper.

“One tower, six feet in height, will provide 175 feet of conventional garden which can be doubled by year-round production,” he said. “It is not dependent on erratic weather.”

4392 Giant Watermelons

Watermelons grown in Turkestan along the Tigris River have under special conditions reportedly reached the weight of two hundred and seventy-five pounds. A watermelon grown near Hope, Arkansas, and weighing one hundred and thirty-six pounds, was, one year, sent to President Coolidge.

In 1975, a watermelon weighing 90 lbs. was reported at the Georgia Southern College, Macon, Georgia.

4393 Largest Vegetables

The largest tomato was grown by Charles Roberts in England. The tomato weighed 4 lbs. 4 oz. in 1974. The largest cabbage was grown by William Collingwood in England. Its weight was 123 lbs. And the largest pumpkin belonged to a farmer in Ohio in 1975. Its weigh was 378 lbs.

4394 Island Of Nightingales

In the stormy North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands lay a ledge of rocks where many a vessel had been wrecked. Pirates who looted vessels inhabited the island and murdered crews. Finally the Netherlands government determined to rid the island of pirates and assigned Edward Bok’s father, a young Dutch lawyer, to do the job.

It was a grim place, barren of trees, of any living green thing, but the young lawyer cleaned up the island and not only decided to make it his home but determined to make the island beautiful. He led seafaring men to inhabit the island and said to them, “We must have trees.” They were too busy with their fishing and so he was compelled to say, “I’ll have the trees if I must plant them myself.”

“Your trees will never live,” said the islanders. “The North winds and storms will kill them all.” But plant trees he did, a hundred the first year. The second year he planted more and each year for the fifty years he lived on the island, he planted trees.

As the trees grew tall through the years, the island became a bird sanctuary. In time, bird lovers from all parts of the world came to this island to study the thousands of birds which rested here.

Then one night a singular thing happened. A pair of storm-driven nightingales found refuge in the island. In gratitude for their refuge they remained on the island and raised their young nightingales. Within a few years the island became a colony for nightingales. Throughout Holland and Europe, the fame of the Island of Nightingales spread.

American artist, William M. Chase, brought his pupils here each year, “In all the world today,” he asserted, “there is no more beautiful place.”

—Benjamin P. Browne

4395 Farming For Love Of It

At a county fair in New England there was a continual crowd around one agricultural exhibit which excited a great deal of admiration, and was the occasion of many remarks. The exhibit was marked, “Raised on an Abandoned Farm.”

The articles shown were grown by a man who had formerly followed another occupation, upon the farm in a rough hill town, which its owner had found an undesirable piece of property, and had practically deserted. The exhibit included twenty-two varieties of potatoes, several varieties of wheat, oats, barley, rye, and beans, onions, pumpkins, squashes, melons, beets, carrots, and turnips. The people kept the proprietor of the abandoned farm busy explaining how he produced such wonderful results. His reply was that he took delight in farming, and did the best he could. “O yes,” said one bystander, “he’s farming for the love of it.”

—The Youth’s Companion

See also: Buildings.