BOOMING LUCERNE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 75, 23 December 1918, Page 8

BOOMING LUCERNE

Uicerne is being fairly boomed inCanrbury and many parts of the North ■and this eerisoii, and it is estimated at ecorca of .plots will be established ' a result of the activities of officers of s Department of Agriculture,, which, es not urge, fablers to go in for lucerne lus-bolfts, imt to experiment, with iall plots to test tho suitability of- their id for the legume. It is now held that, ren. tho proper attention, lucerne will j>w on ■well-drained lands from the irth Cape to Stewart Island. Despite b season, a Southland plot which wna f for the first time during the'middle [October hail then -reached an average iglit of Ift. Gin. to 2ft. The second t was made six weeks later, and was 3u fully IS inches high on.the arerngs tb. n great wealth of leaves, in which 3 chief nutriment of the plant is found, is plot, whicli is onlv a. small one, was t in last December (1917) by tlio owner Jα test, the soil being .of a very Bandy cure, and not over-suitablo to the rcjremente of tho plant, ns it contains 'nore or less broken crust of iron stone, ne interesting: figures aro in circulnli showing what can be done with erne. One farmer, with a total area of lacres, makes lucerne his staple' food, jh a solid patch of 10 acres to draw on. Ith carting out of the feed he is able 'carry, what with milking cows and Inp stuff, 31 head of cattle, and a herd ; pigs running sometimes into the renties. His return last year on this tern of working aire given as beinir over M—for a 30-acre plot. "With this deed proof of what can bo done, the mi in lucerne can readily •be iinderbd. The hard logic of fact, such as i above, is convineinsr many of the ue of the lucerne patch.