FARMING EXTRACTS. [From "New Zealand Farmer" Journal.] Crops Grown from Seed.

Te Aroha News, Issue 166, 21 August 1886, Page 4 (Supplement)

FARMING EX TRAC TS . [From "New Zealand Farmer" Journal.] Crops Grown from Seed.

Thx most exhausting crops are those grown} for their seeds, which are sold off the -farm ;i whereasthe ameliorating crops, as they, are sometimes termed, are usually consumed in a green state on the farm. Much, of course, depends on the capacity of the plants for obtaining food from various sources and assimilating it in different forms, A crop of wheat, for example, collects only about forty-five pounds of nitrogen per acre, while a crop of clover contains nearly three times that amount of nitrogen, and yet the wheat exhausts the land of nitrogen and the clover enriches it. This is explained by the fact that the cereal crop contains in its seeds a large amount of non-nitrogenous compounds, the deposit of which has required the passage through their system of much nitrogen, and this, together with the mineral matter carried off by the crop, produces exhaustion of the soil. On the other hand, clover derives but a small part of its organized structure from the soil, while by its large system of leaves it absorbs a considerable quantity of nourishment from the atmosphere, and probably 'by shading the ground retains evaporable nutritive substance in the soil. Leguminous crops in general, also grasses and broad leaved root crops, are, for similar reasons, less exhausting than the cereals.