Airborne Pellets For Pastures
An ingenious method of resowing the barren lands of the south-west-ern United States with grass is now being developed. The idea started in the mind of Dr L. S. Adams of Phoenix, Arizona, who realised that some way should be found ox making grass grow again on large areas which had been eaten by roaming cattle.
Dr Adams noticed that the seeds eaten by rabbits and left in their droppings sprouted more quickly than other seeds. This suggested to him the idea that if grass seeds could be scattered widely enough with a protective covering of earth or clay they would have a better chance of taking root than seds sown by normal methods, which were so frequently devoured by birds.
So as an experiment 90,000 acres of barren land were sown from the air with little pellets of dry clay each enclosing a few seeds of grass or clover. The pellets were distributed through a revolving drum underneath the plane, and they were heavy enough to fall in a regular pattern and not to be scattered by air currents. Fertiliser was also put in with the seeds. To keep the plane supplied with its ammunition of grass seeds, a travelling pellet factory moved across the open prairie, mixing the clay and seeds in huge drums as it went. So far, the results are very promising.
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 7, 4 July 1949, Page 5
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230Airborne Pellets For Pastures Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 7, 4 July 1949, Page 5
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