THE VALUE OF LIME IN AGRICULTURE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1877, 11 April 1889, Page 4

THE VALUE OF LIME IN AGRICULTURE.

(From the Ashburton G-uardian.)

The value of lime as a manure or dressing for agricultural lands is well understood and appreciated in the Old Country, and as more scientific farming comes to be practised in the colony the use of this heartener of the soil will become much more general than it is at present. Already many of our best farmers in various parts of the ' colony are resorting extensively to its use, and tho advantage of being within easy distance of a limekiln are amply demonstrated by the following remarks in the Millburn letter of a contemporary: —"The crops here are this year more than usually luxuriant, and I am told they compare favorably with those in most of the districts of Otago. The farmers of this neighborhood have of late been putting considerable quantities of lime on their land. The proximity of the kilns makes it comparatively easy for them to procure this powerful fertiliser. .During the last nine months great quantities of it have been carted from the kilns for agricultural purposes. Luxuriant grasa, grain, and root crops soon tell the passer-by where it has been applied. The agriculturists here all seem agreed that it is the cheapest manure they can put on their-ground. The crops and improved prices have already somewhat brightened faces that have of recent years been a little saddened by the prevailing depression." We may add that we have information to hand of similarly successful results of the use of lime on farms in this district. . Last year Mr John Hood, of Mount SoEers, experimented on some of his land, upon which he has this season grown a crop of oats, dressing part with lime, at the rate of 25c vvt to the acre, and leaving part of the paddock undressed. The result was most conclusive, the crop on that portion of land treated with lime yielding 10 bushels to the acre more than that which was not limed. So thoroughly satisfied is Mr Hood of the beneficial cesults of the use of lime that he intends to dress 50 acres this year and several of our leading farmers are following suit, one having entered into a contract for the supply of 100 tons, and several others for 50 tons each. As the season has now arrived for preparing the ground for next year's crop it might be well for farmers generally to experiment in this direction, more especially for wheat crops, there being every reason to believe that the results will prove satisfactory.

TO THE EDITOE. Sie, —I was pleased to see in your issue of yesterday a short reference in your leading column to the value of lime as a dressing for land, and with your permission would like to offer a few remarks on the subjoct. If you speak to any farmer in. this county about liming he will generally tell you that he knows that liming land is a good thing, but, in the same breath, will say that it does not pay here. This, notwithstanding that he has never made the experiment and consequently has no practical experience on the subject anent which he speaks so dogmatically and confidently, his opinion on the matter being born of a natural apathy or an old-fashioned and ultra-Conservative antagonism to a departure from the one old rut along which he has crawled for years. Tet in agriculture, as in all other matters the law of the survival of the fittest must in the end prevail, and in a few years hence such non-progressive individuals will be as rare as the dinornis Mantelh, if not altogether extinct, like the dodo. They will no longer be known as farmers, for the keen competition which is going on will assuredly force them to the wall. But not all farmers are of this stamp, and there is here and there one who founds his opinions and his consequent practice upon the results of actual experiment upon ascertained data and proven facts. Of such is Mr Winter, of the Loan and Mercantile Agency Company. That gentleman last year tried lime on clover, with the result that he is satisfied of the financial success of his experiment: in a word, has found that it pays. He intends liming largely this year, and is in point of experience a clear twelve month ahead of his neighbors. In another case, where oats was the crop treated, the increased yield fully paid for the lime, while the land has been heartened up, and will give better returns for the next five or six years, and thus a handsome profit will be reaped from the outlay. One often hears JN~ew Zealand run down, but it is not the land, but the people who till it who are in fault. For whom have we among our farmers ? Some viho are really agriculturists in the true sense of the word, but as for the rest (and that rest is a large proportion) they are clergymen, lawyers, doctors, merchants, linen-drapers, and what not—in fact, representatives of every trade and profession that you can think of save professional farmer, who is as rare as he is valuable. The old saying " Fool rush in where angels fear to tread " has its application in this direction, as witness the way in which many who, knowing nothing about it, have sunk their money in trying to farm, and who go floundering along without the least idea how to improve matters, and consequently with no hope of retrieving their fallen fortunes, even if they have the energy to try. Wot a few of them have come to grief solely because they are

ignorant of the fact—or act as if they i were—that you cannot keep on taking everything out of the land without; putting something into it, and very often the something that is wanted is, lime, To show why lime is so bene-, ficial to plant life it is only necessary to note the large percentage which j lime, Jand also potash, form of the i chemical constituents of all the prin- j cipal farm crops. The indispensable ] alkali—potash—appears to have been originally derived from the granitic j rocks, in which it exists iu combina- \ tion with silicic acid and alumina in the well-known minerals felspar and mica, these rocks having in course of time disintegrated to form soils for the support of plants. The chief substance employed for acting chemically upon the constituents of the soil, so as to render them more serviceable to plant life, is lime, which modifies in a very important, manner both the organic and mineral portions. Its action upon the former (the organic portion) consists in promoting decay, and the conversion of its elements into the forms (viz., carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and nitric acid), in which it is most serviceable to the plant, while, as regards the inorganic constituents of the soil, lime acts by assisting the decomposition of minerals, particularly of those which contain the alkalies, such as felspar, thus converting them into the soluble forms, in which condition they are taken up and assimilated by vegetation. With the above facts before him, the farmer will easily see why it is that lime is so beneficial in its action upon the Soil, and why it is that a continuation of good crops cannot be secured without its employment. Thanking you, sir, in anticipation, for space for the foregoing, I am, etc..

Agricola,