ENSILAGE MAKING THE BEST WEED KILLER.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 655, 28 March 1914, Page 6

ENSILAGE MAKING THE BEST WEED KILLER.

Of all the vegetation pests thai are antagonistic to profitable grain growing,it in almost invariably agreed that wild oats is ths very worst. "Almost" is used advisedly, as there are yet those who favour the letting of the wild oats grow during the grass rotation period as freely as they will for the feeding of the stoek. This weedy stuff, of course,is turned under after seeding at fallowing time, but this, even admitting that wild oats furnishes good feed, is pronounced by the most experience men as a fallacy. To endeavour to kill wild oats by ploughing them under, once they have attained the seeding stage, has been proved to be not only futile, but one of the greatest evils wherever prac tised. Wild oats, it ii found, can only be killed _by ploughing them under in the green stage, immediately after sprouting,or harvesting them before seeding. "As a means of cleaning the land," remarked one farmer to ''The Leader's" agricultural reporter, "ensilage making is invaluable, as the crop can be cut absolutely green, so as not to shad a single seed. We cart it direct to the silo immediately it falls from the reaper and binder, not even waiting to put it into stooks. On the other hand, if one cuts a dirty crop for hay, it has to be ripe ecough so as not to heat the Btack, and by tbat time the wild oat seed is so advanced as to shake out on the ground even during the process of curing, and then as it is being carted to the stank it is practically sowing the paddock again with, wild oats, not to speak of the further distribution of these obnoxiou seeds 3 through the animals to which the hay is fed."