Soil Cultivation

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 37, 13 February 1937, Page 12 (Supplement)

Soil Cultivation

The opinion that tho multiple ploughings, liarrowings and rollings hitherto considered the acme of good farming may be unnecessary, was advanced in a paper by Dr. B. A. Keen, of the Kothamsted Experimental Station, read before a farmers’ conference at Rhodes House, Oxford. The new theory of water movement in the soil, he said, destroyed the old idea that the use of harrows or other cultivating implements conserved moisture. Harrowing or hoeing only conserved moisture indirectly by removing the competition of weeds. In their muin implication these views were supported by Mr. C. Culpin, of the Cambridge •School of Agriculture. “Modern thought on tho subject of cultivations generally,” he said, “suggests the possibility that,, provided rubbish is buried, seeds are covered to ensure germination, and weeds kept down, the cultivations employed in the growing of some of our crops may matter little, and the cheapest methods are the best. ” Mr. Arthur Amos, of Wye, Kent, speaking ’irom lhc practical farmer’s point of view, said that the results of Dr. Keen’s and Mr. Culpin’s researches wo re disturbing, and that the somewhat tentative conclusions drawn from them must be regarded with something akin to suspicion.