Farm and Dairy.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 209, 7 March 1896, Page 2

Farm and Dairy.

PERMANENT PASTURE FOR BUSH LANDS. Id a week or two the large area burDt off this summer will be soon sown, and it behoves every bush . farmer to use his best judgment in selecting a proper mixture of grasses. Fast experience all along the bush district of this coast has proved that too little care was bestowed on the selection of various seeds. Many sowed one variety, so that it con'd be harvested in summer and grazed in winter, but the result proved that grazing and harvesting the same field did not go hand in hand. In this district we have arople evidence of this. Cocksfoot was a few years ago sown almost exclusively, the payable price encouraging pioneer settlers to sow it without any addition, beyond a little white clover. The plan suited well for a time, the good prices for the seed making cocksfoot paddocks most profitable to the new settlers, and the cocksfoot had a redeeuiing feature of being better able to withstand fire than any other grass. Later, however, the dairy industry introduced itself, and this district being suited in every way for milk producing, the cocksfoot crop gave way, the paddocks being utilised for grazing dairy herds. The cocksfoot had so far did all that was asked of it ; it ! had covered the surface with a rank growth, returned a handsome profit on the harvests, kept down the thistles, and withstood the fires we had experienced better than any other grass would have done. But when dairying was started the clean cocksfoot paddocks of a few years before were half cocksfoot, half York shire fog, with here and there a patch of clover. Not the best pasture for milk producing, as dairy factory managers, and bush fanners have long ago discovered, but the grass was sown with a purpose, and is fulfilled what at the time of sowing seemed most prudent. Since the dairy industry has become what I might terra a piliar of the pastoral interests of the colony, it is, I take it, a national duty of every farmer to lay down a mixture of seeds that will give forth an abundant growth, not one or two varieties that come to luxuriance at the one time and then pine away until the succedinc; spring, but a mixture, the habits of growth being such that when one variety is at its best another will be coming on to take its place. Too often too little care is bestowed on grassing bush land, and the result ia that rubbishy grasses and weeds take the place of what should be a good sole of judiciously-chosen varieties, and carelessness in sowing bush lands takes years to remedy. As to cocksfoot, the writer considers it a good grass, sown in moderation, and it is difficult to say what variety could well take its place, but one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one grass make a paßture Many decry the merits of cocksfoot, yet those who have tried it are of opinion that for West Coast soil no grass tan supplant it. Kept in check and sown in moderation it is a grand grass, and cows give a good re* turn of milk when grazed upon a pasture of which cocksfoot forms a part. A permanent pasture should include cocksfoot, Italian ryegrass, perennial ryegrass, meadow fescue, meadow foxtail, timothy, rough stalked meadow, and prairie grass, with the clovers— cowgrass, white clover, and alsike. Of the grasses, the first half-dozen named (with the clovers) should be in every permanent pasture, and the addition of the other varieties would improve the pasture. It is to be hoped that intending sowers will give the subject of laying down bush land to permanent pasture more attention than it unfortunately receives, and thus secure a good pasture. A well grassed farm keeps the farmer, the farmer has to keep the badly-grassed one.— Hawera Star.