Agricultural and pastoral.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 560, 16 March 1868, Page 3

Agricultural and pastoral.

M AN UR I y G.

(From I’ie Canterbury Times, 20th. February.)

One of the most noticeable differences netweeu .£iiiigusn auu Colonial farming is, the absence of the necessity for manuring, in order to secure satisfactory crops which has hitherto existed here. The English farmer’s expenses for artificial manure alone, on anything like a highly farmed estate, would frighten many a colonist. There is guano, j superphosphate, lime, salt, gypsum, and a variety of other tilings, which are looked upon as essentials there, but of which we know nothing as yet. We shall have to become acquainted with them before long, if we wish to sow with a prospect of reaping. A rich virgin soil, may yield satisfactory returns year after year for many seasons, but ultimately the properties required for the development of the crop become exhausted, the land becomes over grown with weeds, and then, and not till then, we sow it down with grass, and keep it eaten down bare to the roots —that being our idea of giving the land a rest. When the land gets broken up after this, our expectations of a good crop are almost invariably thwarted. The experience of the last year or two has made it apparent that good yields of corn, after grass, are not the rule; indeed, we have hardly seen such a crop, but we have seen many had ones. What we w r ant to arrive at is somesatisfactory way of manuring our corn lands cheaply. Even if orass growing did produce satisfactory results, the cost of sowing down has hitherto been too great to render a large majority of our farmers willing to breakup English grass paddocks unless under exceptional inducements. j

The cost of artificial manures is very large at home, and they could not be imported here exceptat very high rales; and we can hardly hope to*see them in use so long as they can possibly be done without, or so long as there are lands yet unbroken which will p n _v for the labor. We believe it would be quite possible to produce an artificial manure here at such a pn-ice as would ensure it profitable use. The number! of bones thrown away from every kit j chen in the course of the year must bej very great. If we take into consider-! ation the amount of meat consumed! here—which must be twice as much in j proportion to the population as in England, for there unfortunately many a' family hardly ever sees anything in the shape of meat in their house—we must see how many tons we waste of thE article, which is one of the best manures ever used. The gelatine in the minute cells of bones, contains a great amount of nitrogen, and readily putrifies when moistened with water and exposed to the air. It is then greedily absorbed by plants, and causes rapid vegetation. It contains twelve times more forcing elements, and from 80 to 100 times! more seed-forming ingredients than straw, or the solid excrement of animals. These remarks apply only to finely pounded and ground bones, and it certainly would be worth the while of some enterprising man to go into the manufacture of this article here, where the materials are lying unvalued and unheeded in everybody’s yard. The price of ground bones in England is per ton; they should be produced here at very litttle over that figure, seeing that the the raw material could be got for nothing, whilst at home it| has to be purchased. This would be found a capital top dressing for wheat; and, if sown in autumn, the winter rains would assist its action very materially.

Another cheap manure—and one easy of application, and remarkably rapid in its action—is gypsum. It appears, however to be very partial, and will only act beneficially on some few plants, clover being its especial favorite; upon this its action is almost wonderful; Light sandy soils, in a dry situation, with a porous subsoil, arc peculiarly adapted for its use; a description wondrously applicable to our dry plain lands. It is usually sown broadcast, after, the rate of, say 3 cwts to the acre. A damp day or a dewy morn- \ D §> should be chosen, when the clover is about 4 inches high, and under favorable circumstances, a few days will suffice to shew its effect. The clover plants will become of a deeper green, the leases broad and vigorous, and the crop will turn out probably half as

much again as it would Lave done without it. This is one of the cheapest manures in use, and may be purchased in England 80s a ton, so that good manuring costs about 4s 6d an acre. We should like to see it tried here, and are quite sure that it would answer our most sanguine expectations in like a good season. The suicidal plan of burning all our straw is one which cannot he too severely deprecated. Hundreds of cattle | could be well wintered with the straw tual is every year is destroyed by fire., Store cattle are always cheap in the early months of winter, and any farmer having a supply of oaten straw might make a good deal of money by buying in at that time and keeping the cattle in his yards till spring, when the feed coming on in the paddocks induces many buyers to go into market, and consequently prices are high. The direct profits to be made in this wav would he large, but the indirect would be larger still. The amount of manure which these cattle woultLmake would be very great, and this, carted out on the grass lands in the early spring, would increase their productiveness amazingly. Good oaten straw, with plenty of water, will keep cattle in capital condition, and in many parts of England we have seen dairy cows in calf kept in the yards almost up to the day of calving. The warmth which a good yard affords has also a great deal to do withfhehealthyappearance which well attended straw-fed cattle always present. Let any of our readers try the experiment, and they will have no reason to complain. Farmers will have to go into things of this kind more largely than they have hitherto done. It will not do to rely upon one 'thing alone for a living, for if that fails, we are in difficulties. We have growm corn here till on many farms, the land has become almost entirely exhausted, | and the low prices for cereals ought to jhave taught us to turn our attention to other mutters. He is a wise husbandman who strives to return to the soil 'as large a proportion of the virtue which he has extracted from it as is possible, at a moderate cost. If w r o will persist in racking out our land, and giving it nothing in return, we may be quite sure that such a system will work out its own revenge, and that the land will, before long, serve us in the same way.