SEED OR CUTTINGS?

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 36, 11 August 1936, Page 16

SEED OR CUTTINGS?

PAMPAS CULTURE

FODDER ADVANTAGES

An indication of the intensity with which pasture questions and similar questions are being investigated today is found in the fact that "pampas grass as fodder" has now quite a bibliography of its own. In the last couple of years such questions have emerged as to whether certain strains of pampas grass are more palatable to cattle than others, and should be favoured. Such contention is not admitted by Messrs. B. C. Aston and R. E. R. Grimmett (Chemistry Section of the Department of Agriculture)' in a paper published in the New Zealand Journal of Agriculture..

"The authors do not consider it proved that any variety of pampas is unpalatable. Of course, an overgrown plant many years ' old may present physical difficulty to grazing by stock unless first cut down and allowed to form new growth." Instances are given of successful grazing of pampas propagated from ordinary wild pampas.

Propagating from seed is better than propagating from clumps or cuttings. "The most precarious method of establishing a plantation is by means of subdivisions of existing mature clumps, as, owing to the danger of a drought killing the cuttings, heavymortality may be experienced. Such cuttings should be obtained from vigorous shoots, and should not be taken from portions that, have borne flowers; the outside portions of a clump supply the best shoots. Cuttings should be planted in sprang, when danger of frost is over and when the soil is moist. Cuttings must be planted at an angle of 45 degrees, with the surface: if planted upright, water may rot the crown. Pampas is a sun-loving plant—a light-demander. It must be kept free from smothering weeds' in the early days of establishment." But the best way to * establish a pampas plantation is to start with seed or seedlings. "Wild seedlings or seed (when. commercially available) should provide the- most economical and most certain method." The seed should, be germinated in shallow boxes on the surface of a light sandy soil such as pumice. The seed should. be germinated .on the surface and should' not be j covered by soil. The seedlings thus raised in boxes should be transplanted to a well-tilled soil,' and later, when they are about nine months old, should be planted out in a strongly-fenced cultivated area at the rate of 1000 plants to the acre— that is, in rows so that a plant is apr proximately 6ft from any other plant. "They must not be grazed until near

the end of the second year after being established in the paddock. During the time the land should be kept free from weeds. After this the pam-pas-plants will look after themselves and successfully compete with the weeds.

"The next-best method is to obtain the smallest possible wild seedlings from Whangarei and plant these out in the site of the required plantation. Seedlings may be planted in spring and autumn. — "With regard to all plantations, stock must not be allowed to graze the plants too hard" during the first grazing, neither must the plants be allowed to'flower, as.,this would considerably weaken the vegetative development of-■ the whole plant. It is unnecessary to manure pampas unless unsatisfactory results indicate that some form of soil-enrichment is necessary." Seed threshed out of" Whangarei pampas-plumes has given a 72 per cent, germination test, and when the seed is merely laid on the surface instead of being covered with;the soil a good braird results.

"In the growth of pampas only one anxiety need trouble the farmer —that arising from the suspicion that his fences are hardly strong enough to resist the great desire of stock to break them down in order to get at the young pampas. Many instances have shown that uncontrolled grazing by cattle will kill out the clumps of pampas. .

"It is suggested that pampas will be found useful in stump country, where ploughing is impossible and often softfodder crops cannot be grown. The use of pampas may, therefore, considerably shorten the time taken to break in bush land to dairy-farming by the present practice of felling the forest, burning off, surface-sowing the grass, allowing the stumps to rot, which takes twenty or more years, before logging-up and burning the stumps, I ploughing and growing supplementary fodder crops."

takes twenty or more years, before