Big Turnip Grown in Frigid North

1919

22-POUNDER IS PRODUCT OF ARCTIC CIRCLE.

Cabbage Heads That Children Hide Behind Also Claimed for Icy Regions.

OTTAWA, Ont., Canada. — A turnip weighing twenty-two pounds is a monster vegetable when raised anywhere. When raised almost on top of the Arctic circle it is an event.

A turnip weighing exactly that was grown this year in the Hudson Bay Company's garden at Fort Good Hope, a few miles south of the point where the Arctic circle cuts the Mackenzie River.

At Fort Resolution, in the same latitude as the extreme top of Labrador, potatoes as big as cantaloupes were raised which yielded six and a half pounds to the hill. In the mission garden at Hay River cabbages grew so large that a 3-year-old child could hide behind one of the heads. Onions, lettuce, rhubarb, peas and all the other vegetables familiar in gardens of lower latitudes grew in abundance and to great size.

Not All Desolation.

The story of the agricultural possibilities of the Mackenzie River basin brought back by Dr. E. M. Kindle of the Canadian Geological Survey, who spent the summer there, will doubtless surprise those accustomed to think of that part of the world as a region of frozen desolation.

"The Mackenzie River basin as far north as the Arctic circle," said Dr. Kindle, "is a good mixed farming country. There are fine vegetable gardens at every post between Athabasca and Fort Good Hope. The range of vegetables is the same as on down-East farms. Potatoes have been grown at Fort McPherson, within seventy miles of the Arctic Ocean. I ate fine tomatoes ripened in the gardens at Fort Providence, north of Great Slave Lake.

Wheat Grows Well There.

"The northern limit of wheat is a little past the sixty-first parallel. It will not ripen as far north as Fort Simpson, but for years it has been grown successfully at Fort Providence. For fifteen years it has been a good crop at Fort Vermillion, 600 miles north of Edmonton. It is a heavier crop in the Peace River country than in many parts of the southern prairies. The yield of the Peace River Valley, the Grande Prairie and Fort Vermillion districts this year was about 7,000,000 bushels. Barley ripens farther north than wheat. It grows well at all points along the Mackenzie as far north as Fort Norman and has ripened directly on the Arctic circle at Fort Good Hope.

"The explanation of the wonderful crops of the far North is the long days with their almost continuous sunshine. Actual records show that at Fort Simpson there are 570 hours of sunlight in June and only twelve hours less in July. In the four months from May to August there are 2,147 hours of sun, as compared with 1,805 at Ottawa. Nineteen hours of sunshine a day works magic in gardens and fields."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 8.