NEW FACTS ABOUT SLAG.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 523, 4 December 1912, Page 3

NEW FACTS ABOUT SLAG.

Basic slag has undoubtedly proved itself the most generally useful fertiliser yet introduced into New Zealand, for it not only appears to suit a wide variety of land, but its effects are lasting. Although basic slag has been used for far longer and to a much larger extent in the Old Country than its has out here, it would seem as if its many good qualities are only now commencing to be fully realised. In this connection an English agriculturl paper remarks:— Gradually increased knowledge and experience seem to be widening the field of usefulness of basic slag, until there really seems to be no class of grass land which it cannot improve. At first we thought that it was of value only on clay land pastures. Then we found that it needed only to be used in conjunction with a potash manure to make it almost equally effective on most light land pastures. That left only a little land here and there on which slag did not seem to work for some reason or others. Now a thoroughly practical farmer and writer has come out with the assertion that humus is the lacking element where either slag alone or slag with potash fail to act. In most cases he therefore gives a dressing of farmyard manure in addition to the basic slag and finds that thia enables the slag to get to work. One would think that there must be humus from decaying roots and herbage on any old pasture, but the fact remains that a thoroughly practical man has found a dressing of dung necessary in exceptional cases to enable the slag to work. We believe, however, that there is scarcely any grass land that will not respond to 3lag with potash if not to slag alone. Here is another new fact about slag told by another prominent farmer. Trials on his heavy clay land have convinced him that he must use as much as a ton per acre to give him a result. Less is of little use; more gives no coresponding improvement (This is borne out in a great measure by our experience in this country. At the Ruakura State Farm, half-ton dressings gave much better results than smaller .quantities applied at shorter periods). In subsequent years, after such a lavish dressing, when the land again calls for help, quite a light dressing of slag anwsers the purpose. He assumes that there must be something in the soil that needs an extra heavy dressing to overcome it. Whatever the true explanation may be, the fact remains that this hard-headed farmer enthusiastically dresses his pastures at the rate of a ton an acre of baaic slag and persuades his neighbours to do the same, with excellent results. These suggestions may be worth something to any who have failed to get the response they hoped for from their manure.