DISEASE from SEED from FALLOW GROUND.

Patea Mail, 19 February 1881, Page 4

DISEASE from SEED from FALLOW GROUND.

A correspondent in the Adelaide Observer says :—Many of our farmers are in the habit of getting their seed from a crop of fallowed ground, and generally sow it on fallowed land again, because they say it is clean wheat. Is it not well known that the first crop is the rankest ? and is it not well known also that anything that is rank or rich is more liable to disease than any other ? I firmly believe that wheat from wornput land, however small, if it is a fulj grain, is the best for sowing on new fallowed land, and I question whether it will be attacked by any disease whatever. Does not the chemist say that the first crop takes an undue proportion of different substances from the soil, more so than any succeeding crop ? If such is the case (and I see no reason for gainsaying it) does it not follow that the grain grown to so high a state of perfection is almost unable to withstand any disease whatever, however slight it may be ? I think the time is not far distant when most farmers will have to know a certain amount of chemistry far beyond what the general farmer knows in these times, so that we may be able to detect different diseases in the field, which is far beyond reading of them in books or papers. I would like to ask some of your correspondents whether red rust is an hereditary disease in some kinds of wheat; if so, why advocate sowing diseased grain (i.e. shrivelled wheat) whilst there is good wheat to be got ?