A New Fodder Plant.

Manawatu Herald, 14 December 1897, Page 3

A New Fodder Plant.

' Attention has recently been directed to a fodder plant largely grown in

the Southern States of America, and

called the cow pea. It i 3 indigenous to the tropical lands of the East, and in India its seed is sown in July and August:, the crop being harvested in October and November. Though called a pea, it is reilly a bean, and it resembles the haricot beans of English gardens. Its pod can be used as a green culinary vegetable like French beans, or scarlet runners but its principal use is as a fodder plant. It grows sometimes as a short upright bush about a foot long, with short lateral branches, and at others as a sprawling plant, with trailing runners, the prostrate sterna attaining a length of as much as 20ft. The beans vary in siza from that of a pea to a large sized kidney bean. Some varieties ripen in nine weeks from the date of sowing, others in nine months, but the

warmer the climate the larger the plant, and the longer it takes to grow to maturity. When the crop ' is removed the surface soil is left richer ia nitrogen than it was previously. The chief functions of the orop are said by the United Biates Department of Agriculture to be (1) to furnish large amounts of nitrogen, abstracted from the air, and stored up in the roots and Btubble, in a form available for the

use of subsequent crops ; (2) to pro duce a large yield of vines and peae, rich in digestible protein, which either as hay or for soiling purposes will take the place of concentrated nitrogenous foods ; (8) to supply humus, which promotes the availability of the basic minerals in the ■oil. The fullest value of the crop js obtained when it 13 cut and fed by cattle, and the resulting farmyard manure ia returned to the land. The peavine will not grow north of the latitude of Concectictt, but it ought to thrive well, says a Sydney paper, in any part of Australia, and will renovate exhausted toil without much expeqse.