HINTS TO FARMERS.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 201, 14 March 1877, Page 2

HINTS TO FARMERS.

Thk cultivation of linseed, rape seed, and in fact all oleaginous seeds .should pay well in Taranaki, when they arc known to grow very freely. At Home it is said the cultivation of these seeds pays better than wheat growing at 7s. 6cL per bushel, and when a comparatively small sum is spent in the erection of oil crushing machinery, a district where it is produced in large quantities, could be made to double or treble the return of a wheat crop. Linseed and rape seed are imported at home Irom the Baltic and Mediterranean Countries in enormous quantities, and although, we learn, they are very inferior to what could bo produced iu New Zealand, yet they scarcely realise ever less than Os. 6s. per bushel ; whilst those Iroiu Bombay and Calcutta find ready purchasers at 7s. to Bs. (id. per bushel. Large shiploads are constantly received in England, and the buyer utilises them by turning the seeds into oil, &c. The seeds produce, we believe, about the same weight per acre as wheal, and require only same cost iu farm labour, and less cost iu the price of seed. The average yield of one acre of linseed is

],Boolhs., containing, we learn, 130lhs. of oil, hamng 15 cwt. of the most fattening food known for cattle feed, which always limls a ready sale at home at from £ll to £l2 per ton. Rape seed is especially a valuable oil-yielding seed, and. its stalks and fibrous matter are valuable to stoekmastevs for irrigative purposes. The supply of this seed that England receives yearly is very large, and if it was known that we can grow it here, a new article of export might he created.— Taranaki Herald,