FLAX CULTURE.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2101, 29 January 1870, Page 2

FLAX CULTURE.

(From the New Zealand Herald.) Now that it is being every week more and more conclusively demonstrated that the New Zealand flax is a most valuable product, and one for which the appetite will increase with the supply, we would, fain draw the attention of our country settlers to the advisability of making it one of their regular crops. There are very many urgent reasons why they should do this, of which wc propose to mention a few. And first of all, is the fact, that while increased growth of many crops will simply end in glutting the market, this cannot be the case with flax. Were the area of cropping to be doubled in this Colony, the effect would, doubtless, be to bring down the price of many articles of produce so low that the growth would cease to [be profitable to the farmer. This is already coming to be the case with potatoes, butter, and some few other trifling articles, but it would not be so with flax. Our market for this product is not simply a home, but a European one ; and the more constant, and regular, and increased the supply we can send home, the greater will be the demand for it. Manufacturers at home, finding then that they can rely on having a regular and sure supply of the raw material, will erect extensive machinery for the working of it up, and thus the more we grow the more we shall need to grow. While then there is danger that the best crop a farmer may have in any one year, being generally good throughout the Colony, may be more or less unsaleable, he will always feel secure in obtaining a price for bis flax. There is another very good reason why a large patch of flax land should be cultivated upon every farm, and that is that, acre for acre, there is no crop the settler can grow which will turn him in so large a money profit ; and yet another, that in the rough dressing of it for market he will find ample opportunity for turning to profitable account, in the rainy weather, labor which would have been 'either lost, or worm than lost, have been employed, sooner than do nothing, in working land too wet to be profitably touched with either plough or harrow. It is more than probable, also, that as the flax plant becomes cultivated, the strength and fineness of its texture will be improved. The flax patch, too, would be a most valuable addition to the farm cultivation, inasmuch as once planted and fenced, it would need comparatively little cultivation. For oats, wheat, potatoes, and other roots and cereals, the land needs to be broken up and dressed each year, but not so with flax. We are not prepared to say how long, when once planted, a flax plantation would remain productive, but certainly some few years ; the most that it would require being that the land should be stirred occasionally, and perhaps manured between the rows. On many farms where water carriage to a neighboring mills is convenient, the flax might be profitably sold in the green state. On others, where there are facilities for wind or water power, the farmer would perhaps find it more to his interest to retain both profits, and dress the flax himself for the market. What wc would recommend, then, would be that every settler should prepare and plant out a portion of his farm with flax, and the Provincial Council might spend money more foolishly than in offering a reward of L3o—or even Lso—tor the best essay on the cultivation of New Zealand flax, the soil most suitable, and a description and analysis, as to value, of the several varieties of the plant, and the situation, &c., under which each will best thrive.