DEFECTIVE FARMING METHODS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8035, 23 January 1906, Page 3

DEFECTIVE FARMING METHODS.

Canug for (lie insane ami lecturing I on the proper feeding of infants by no ! moans takes up the time of Or Trubv King, the Superintendent of the Seacbfl' Menial llos]>ital. That gentleman is also a scientific farmer, and one gathers from an article in the " Otngo Daily Times" on his farming work at Sea- 1 cliff that he has been very successful his experiments. According lo the >Otago Daily Times," IJr King " has 'cd, and is proving abundantly every a*.j, that the common method of New Zealand farmers in some waiters are

injuriously defective, and that the farmers themselves, once divorced from detect* of their methods, might make uuieli greater profits and incur much less loss than they have done during recent seasons." The writer instances the case of jiotatocs, the disease among which cost New Zealand producers £120,000 last year. The ScnclitV crop suffered severely, and Dr King set to work to see if he could not grow potatoes strong enough to resist the disease. He was helped by recent experiences in Japan, where lie had been living in the open air

&ino»g«t % people very primitive. The n result has been that iu ten mouths he has proved that given sonud seed and sound methods of culture, the disease "is in a great sense strictly preventable." 'The secret is very simple—the storing of the seed tubers in shallow boxen, each tuber seperated from the next, the boxes being so stored thai there is a eonntant passage of air ai l :l light among and around the seed. But Dr. King laughs at the idea that this is hi» discovery. Fifty years ago, he poiuts out, a successful market gardener wrote a series of articles to the " Times" Oil the subject of the Irish potato fauiiue, in which he insisted that potato crops would not, anil did not, fail when the seed was stored in this way. To-day most ol the best grower* in England are storing their potatoes iu this way with the best results, while ill New Zealand seed potatoes are commonly stored in bulk in pits or in cellars. At Seaclil! the crop reared from seed stored by the modern method shows practically no disease, while the results from seed -stored in the ordinary manner, and planted alongside, are described as "most discouraging." Further, the disease ha* appeared again al \\ aitate, Karitane, and elsewhere in the adjacent districts.