Farm and Garden

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 266, 8 June 1910, Page 3

Farm and Garden

Do not allow cows to crowd through narrow doors. Be sure that the approaches to the stable are level and easy. Any carelessness in these details may cause abortion. If a cow is inclined to kick while being milked, pass a small rope around the body just in front of the udder and over the top of the hips. Draw it up snugly, but not tight. If the teats or udder are not sore, this method will quickly cure kicking. The trouble is usually with the milker.

Many growers seem to think any sort of oats h good enough for seed, and are surprised when they get a weak crop. The man who wants to go to work, and stop work by the whistle, is no good to the farmer. Seed selection must be made use of in all crops, careful planting is half the harvest.

The sheep has gone further from the garb and traditions of wild life than any of our beasts for we have developed him in two directions, exacting from him both wool and mutton. The nearest approach to wildness among sheep which have been once tame is presented by those which inhabit the islet of Soay in the St. Kilda group. These are only slightly woolly, and are also brown in colour, thus showing a considerable approach of the Mouflon type, but of course they have had, in their sea-grit home, little-to contend with.

Of all the unlikely fertilisers which could be named, it might be considered that ashes from coal could easily and safely be given first place; yet, if we may accept a statement by a correspondent of the "Rural New Yorker," they are not without fertilising value. This writer says he had to clean up a large quantity of coal ashes and having j no place else to dump them, carted them away and spread them over a clover paddock, arguing that if they did no good they might not do any harm. The soil was a clay, and he says:—"That year the growth of white clover was phenomenal as compared with the growth on adjacent blocks." On another occasion he piled coal ashes in a vacant place to a height of three feet; one tomato seed seems to have strayed into the heap, and with nothing under it but three feet of coal ashes gave him more fruit than any other plant. England sends annually to foreign, countries £20,000,000 for pig products. With organisation amongst the farmers most of this money could be kept in the country. Agricultural instruction is to be specialised in England and Wales to bring the education of the British farmer up to the level of his competitor in other countries. A. man never feels quite so close to Nature as when he sees the sun setting over the backs of the horses he is unhitching and the moon coming up over the cow he is milking. A very good mixture, on which lambs make excellent progress, is vetches and beans. The idea of growing beans with vetches is to keep the latter from being battered down. In selecting potatoes for seed, avoid all that are from stocks not remarkably vigorous and free from "leaf curl." Store your seed in a dry, cool place, and plant under favourable conditions. The series of trials, extending over three years, in Gloucester (England), have proved the desirableness of frequent and radical seed changes in the cultivation of potatoes, either in large or small areas.