The secret to growing a 14.7kg cabbage? Serenade your sprouts daily — that is, according to a group of green-fingered amateurs from Kaohsiung First Community University.
The giant vegetable — 10 times the size of an average cabbage — was grown by a group of 52 novice farmers at the community college who had spent the past year learning from scratch how to grow vegetables.
At a fundraiser on Saturday where the group displayed and sold the fruits of their labors for charity, members of the club said that singing and playing music to their patch of tomatoes, pumpkins, green peppers and cabbages had been key to the bountiful harvest.
Photo: CNA
Club head Yu Shu-yen (游淑燕) told reporters that each member of the club had been assigned a plot of land measuring 20 ping (66m2) to farm after completing 18 lessons on soil, water control, plant diseases and pests, plant selection, and ways to grow vegetables and fruits.
Club members cultivated their crops without using pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Yu said they played music and sang their favorite songs to the vegetables every day to help them “grow up healthily.”
Speaking of the 14.7kg cabbage that stole the show at Saturday’s event, Yu said that certain species of cabbage normally take four to five months to mature, but this one had been harvested only four months after it was planted.
The cabbage could have grown bigger if it had not been harvested for the charity event, with Yu attributing the size of the vegetable to the “friendly farmland” on which it grew.
“It is the reward for the club’s long-term dedication to the promotion of non-toxic agriculture,” Yu said, adding that the approach protected plants from pollution.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS