GREEN MANURING.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 378, 19 June 1889, Page 8

GREEN MANURING.

The question of green manure is jnst now attracting a gcod (leal of attention. When crops begin to fail for want of manure, and manure cannot be easily .trot, then the other methods of fertilising came into favour. In Sarony and Silesia, where an almost purely pandy soil abounds where there i" consequently but little fodder, and cattle-breeding Will not pay, the want of ordinary manure has led to the pjactiee of employing instead such trieen crops as clover and vetches. The } roeedure is as 'follows: — So soon as the iye — a common crop in Saxony — ha** flowered, yellow vetch~seed is sown f.mong it in the proportion of 2\ bushels to the acre. Piotected by the rye-stalks, the vetches soon sprout, and are still too young 1 at harvest-time to he touched by the reaping machine. Immedially after■ward they shont nhead rapidty, and ought to be in full flower -at the beginning of September. The field is then well rolled pr> as to thoroughly "lay" the plants, and the plough followB~the roller, ploughing in the vptch crop. Every four or five years about 4cwt to the acre, of some of the common phopphates, are spread over the ground bpfore the passage of the plough. Thi« tr'-atrnent enables the Saxon farmers to get a jrood wheat crop out of }ii«? land after several fine crop of rye. The chemists explain that it is the great quantity of nitrogen in the succulent preen plants that work the chief part of the miracle, while the decomposition of the fresh vegetable matter underground giveh off carbonic acid, which attacks the inert silicates and turns them into assimilable salts. } ■ ", ,