AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1699, 15 March 1913, Page 10

AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS.

• GRASS VARIETY TRIALS. Mr. G. do S. Baylis, Field Instructor to the Department of Agriculture, is, ac.cording to the "wairarapa Times," anxious to establish grass variety trials in tlio Wairarapa. Those experiments, states Mr. Baylis, consist in sowing in 60piirate plots several varieties, each in a plot by itself, of one-eighth of an acre of the commoner 'varieties, and of much • smaller areas in the case of very raro or I expensive grasses. Each group would consist of sixteen to twenty varieties, likely to bo suitable to the district. About two to two and a half acres of land would l>e Tcquired altogether. When thoroughly established, the plots could be grazed from time to time. The object of t-lio experiment is to note the behaviour of different grasses in different parts of tlio district, to discover thoso most suitable to each, and also thoso most permanent. Notes would require to be taken from time to timo as to which varieties stood cold or heat or drought best, which started to grow earliest in the season, which threw most winter feed, which died out after tlie first, second, or third,year, and which proved themselves most suitable to the district'. Absolutely clean land , was required in order to obtain good results. The best and only satisfactory mctho(l to carry out these experiments was, in ''Mr. Bavlis's opinion, to skim plough quito shallow in the summer season and fallow, and thus destroy the couch and other ■weeds present. In the early autumn tlio land should bo ploughed up, let lie a bit to mellow, then worked up to a good tilth, rolled with a Cambridge roller, and sown down as early in autumn as the season will permit. Mr. Baylis is also desirous that farmers in the North Wairarapa should continue to carry out an turn n and spring oxpori- ■ monts. Tor autumn experiments he suggests oats in variety, wheat in variety, ryo corn, barley, grasses in several pure y varieties, temporary pastures in mixtures, x and permanent pastures in mixtures. Vor il the., spring experiments ho recommends [. the 1 following-.—Green feeds: Maize, t, sorghum, millets, thousand-headed kale, G Buda kale, Jersey kale, cow cabbage, chou >. Moellier rape, silver beet, and mixed forage. Legumes: Clover, peas, beans, « soya beans, cow peas, and lucerne. 1 Cereals: Oats, wheat, and barley. Roots: I Mangolds, turnips, carrots, heliiinli, I swedss, Kohl rabi, and potatoes.