1 Dec., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 421 
ANOTHER GOOD VEGETABLE TO GROW IN QUEENSLAND. 
By HENRY A. TARDENT, 
Manager, Biggenden State Experiment Farm. 
As has often been remarked, Queensland can produce such an extraordinary 
variety of flowers, vegetables, and economic plants of every description, that 
the immigrant from the north of Europe, or even from the south of our island 
continent, is at first somewhat bewildered. If he happens to be of a 
progressive turn of mind, he starts at once studying and using those new 
bounteous gifts of Providence. He does not get discouraged if a first attempt 
at growing or even tasting them is not quite up to what he expected, for taste 
as well as our other senses requires to be gradually educated. And in a short 
time such a settler—poor as he may be financially—has on his table such a 
supply of choicest meats, vegetables, drinks, fruits, and flowers that Lucullus 
himself could have envied him. ; 
If, on the contrary, the new arrival is of a conservative, stubborn, inob- 
servant turn of mind, he will pass indifferent those new things, and stick to a 
diet which was fitted, perhaps, for a cold climate, but which is quite unsuitable 
under our sunny skies. Thus it is that, for instance, in too many of our 
country hotels—there are, of course, exceptions--the traveller always finds an 
unvaried diet of uniformly prepared meat, three times a day, with perhaps here 
and there a potato or a dish of rough Chinese-grown cabbages, simply boiled 
in water without salt or any other condiment, and to complete the feast in 
front of him, there is a sickly-looking bouquet of dust-covered paper flowers. 
Many settlers are not better off, feeding themselves and their families with 
salt junk for two-thirds of the year. 
It goes without saying that such a state of things is regrettable in many 
respects, whether it be due to ignorance or laziness. A rough diet has a 
greater influence on character than perhaps people are aware of. It engenders 
coarse manners, and not seldom coarse morals. 
“Has ever a glutton uttered a noble thought?” says the poet. 
With such a diet the stomach gets fatigued; it revolts against such excess 
of work; it craves for help, and rushes at the first opportunity towards the 
whisky bottle, causing thus those periodical ‘“boozes’’ frequently met with in 
some people, whilst people using more vegetables and fruit are comparatively 
free from such cravings. 
There is not only profit in growing fruits and vegetables; there is pleasure, 
good health, good humour—in short, full happiness. To use some of Mr. 
Wragge’s expressions, “A well-kept orchard is a poem; a vegetable garden a 
treatise on morals; a flower garden, a piece of Paradise on earth.” 
To help those willing to learn, the writer has already given in former 
numbers short notices, not so much on the choicest vegetables as on those easiest 
to grow—such as the sweet potato, the tomato, the Vigna catiang bean or 
so-called “ cow-peas,” &c. To-day he will try and give a few hints on the 
cultivation of the : 
GLOBE ARTICHOKE. 
As far as could be ascertained from people visiting my own farm or the 
Experiment Farm, the plant is very little known. It has even happened that: 
people—and well-educated people they were, too—have, whilst looking at my 
Globe Artichokes plot, complimented me on being able to grow, west of the 
Range, such beautiful pineapples—to which fruit in shape they bear a slight, a 
very slight, resemblance. Itis also not seldom confounded in people’s mind with 
the Jerusalem Artichoke, with which it has nothing in common except the 
name. The plantof the Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) resembles 
in shape the sunflower, and is cultivated principally for its ¢wbers, which 
grow in the soil on the roots of the plant somewhat like ordinary potatoes. 
