FAILURE OF TURNIP CROPS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 865, 11 July 1910, Page 10

FAILURE OF TURNIP CROPS.

THE TROUBLE GENERAL.

There has been a general failing of the turnip crops this season. Various reasons for it have from time to time been put forward.

''Tho Taranaki crops," said a man in Wellington last week, "were being fed off early in Juno. Sonic of them wore rotting then. The stock would not get much good out of them. You couldn't call them fully matured crops, but they were matured as far as they would—they wore really going back." He was told that a writer in "Dalgety's Review" had made the following observation on the failure of tho crops: "Without suggesting this as a cause of unsoundness, my personal observation shows that the use of artificial manure certainly does not tend to produce roots of equal quality to thoso which were at one time grown without its aid on virgin soil. This applies to mangolds as well as turnips." "I doubt that," said the T.wanaki man. "It may bo so, but there are many turnip paddocks in Taranaki which have never been manured."

The poor turnip crops of coursemean losses to the farmers, but tho losses arc not so groat as if the turnip cropls had failed in a bad winter. There is plenty of grass and hay on most farms, so the difficulty is not as acute as it might have been.