LIGHTNING AND CROPS
On July 6 last year, two farmers in Bedfordshire found patches of withered Brussels sprouts on their farms, and two days later a third farmer in the county found the same thing. The first two farms are two and a half and five miles east of Bedford, the third is eight south-east of Bedford. National Agricultural Advisory Service officers are reasonably satisfied that the trouble was not caused by parasitic organism? poisonous substance or soil deficiency. In their opinion, the» damage was caused by lightning during a storm a few days earlier. The fact that the damage has not spread, that the damaged area on one of the farms has been successfully replanted, and that by July 17 some of the damaged plants had shown new growth from the roots, support this view. All the affected patches were roughly circular, but in one instance some of the plants within the circle, particularly towards the outside edge, were hardly damaged at all. The diameters of the circles were 20, 30 and 35 yards. A secondary damaged patch was associated with the largest of the three: this was about 90 yards away, roughly circular, and about 15 yards in diameter. Between the two circles only plants here and there were damaged, sometimes in groups of five to 10.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19570427.2.91.8
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 9
Word count
Tapeke kupu
219LIGHTNING AND CROPS Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 9
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Press. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Acknowledgements
Ngā mihi
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Christchurch City Libraries.