PRACTICE CROP ROTATION

Shannon News, 31 July 1925, Page 2

PRACTICE CROP ROTATION

One of the reasons why soils become worn out and exhausted ?s Unneglect of crop rotation. Whatever crops are grown, or system of farming practised, it is wise to occasional lygiV’ the soil a change. Legume #ops should be introduced frequently and constantly. Crop rotation will iargely help in preventing the land becoming run down. With every form of scientific investigation, with all improvements in agriculture—improved soils, better-bred plants, more perfected tools —there has come into use no method'that contributes quite so much as a wise, well-systematised scheme of crop rotation to the maintenance of fertility and the production of profitable crops. Nature favours the giving of fresh lands for crops to grow in.’ In our bush forests, when the trees are cut, new and different kinds generally grow in place of those removed. In our grass pastures, though imported English grasses and clovers may be growing abundantly,' the tendency is for the soil (o revert back to native grasses, to fern, then to scrub, and finally to bush trees again! With cultivated crops maize does better after clover or lucerne, wheat after peas, and barley or oats after turnips, than either crop after its own kind.

A rotation may be planned for the farm suitable for all its fields. Such practice, however, is not essential, and it is usually wiser to adopt a variely of rotations to serve each type of land. If a part of the farm consists of good ploughable hill land, a rotation is required to suit that type of land, and another rotation is required to suit the bottom land. As New Zealand is a land of grazing pastures, the usual rotations admit of long pasture periods with short cropping periods between. A New Zealand system of crop rotation which is suited to general conditions in this country is the following: First year: Oats, barley, or wheat. Second years: Turnips or other fallow crop. Third year: Oats. Fourth year: Pasture grasses and clovers.

No tight-bound rules of crop rotation should, however, prevail; the rotation should suit the farmer, the farm, and the district. It is a good practice to take, a legume crop, such as beans or peas, clovers, or wetchos. after the grain crop, and as a variation potatoes or rape may be taken as the fallow crop after the legume. However it is planned, the important fact of crop rotation is to have in operation a plan that secures to the land a change in crops.’ —“N.Z. Dairyman.”

TlKttere, Rotorua, that wonderful area of thermal activity, has not been exempt from the changing condition everywhere apparent in the district. A few days ago the surface of the big pool at Hell’s Gate fell five feet, a new feature being, the creation of another big boiling area adjacent. This cauldron of mud and hoiiling wafer has not been subject to any change of level for some years.