RECONSTITUTING THE SOIL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 495, 28 August 1912, Page 6

RECONSTITUTING THE SOIL.

Farmers in Hungary have developed a method of reconstituting the soil so that their crops are increased several fold. They buy up the oldest land, pjough it, and smooth it sufficiently for a steam roller to go over it. The soil is then treated with chemical phosphates. Under these conditions the water stored in the subsoil is conserved for a much longer time after periods of rainfall and so provides nourishment for the plants. The Director of the Koyal Hungarian Academy of Horticulture states that within the last three years there must have been more than two thousand experiments made in this field under the observation of officials, and in every case results nave been excellent, the hops being augmented a : least fifty per cent, in every case. An engineer, wn'ting on Hungarian horticulture, cites a case of a proprietor who has applied the system to his landed property on a most extensive scale. In an exhausted region where the yield of what in 1910 was four hundredweight per hectare as against twelve hundred weight in more fertile areas, the crops reached the respective figures of sixteen and twsntyfour hundredweight in 1911. The same proprietor obtained from thirty to thirty-six hundred weight of barley (and oats) per hectare in earth of the same character that brought others scarcely twenty. The Hungarian farmers givej as the first essential of this new system the working over the earth with the rake in the period following rainfall. The sections well raked have produced sixteen hundred weight more than ordinarily, and potatoes raked over five times have produced fifty-four hundred weight per hectare more than before.