AGRICULTURAL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 169, 4 May 1871, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL.

Crops Without Manure. — What will our great seedsmen, our mamire manufacturers, and sewage farmers say to this? A Norfolk fararer, whose modesty prefers that his name should not be blazoned before the public, though his credit as an excellent manager is well known beyond the limits of his own county, has this year grown 76 tons, good weight, per acre of yellow globe mangolds, without any artificial manure, and the seed of his own growth and selection. This farmer has grown seeds, for his own use only, for the last 40 years, and no doubt the present stock has been very carefully selected. The peculiarity in the case is that no artificial manure whatever was applied, and only about 10 two-horse cartloads per aci'e of good farmyard

dun" The seed wa3 -drilled 61b or 71b per acre ; the plants were singled out by children, without the hoe being previously used/ to gap the vyws, and the lane! was kewtcleav of annsi^fwp.ed3 l»y hand bo^ing.^^fc^Vil/is black fen peat earth thafrnbas^b'een recently clayed.

Mr. J. Alexander writes as follows to the " Australasian " on the results of manuring without draining :— "Sir, — In answer to your question in the leading article in the ' Australasian ' of March 4, • How is it that we have such widely different results under equal conditions of weather?' allow me to state a few ficts. Previous to the wet season seven years ago I manured and fallowed 20 acres, ploughed, and sowed it the following year with oats ; to myastonishment it yielded about seven bushels per acre. I manured four acres this season, aad sowed it with wheat ; it was the worst crop I had two bushels per acre. Land of the same quality without manure gave six bushels per acre. John JVladiil, of Cattle Station Hill, manured and fallowed a few acres last year, ploughed and sowed it this season ; he had no crop at all on it ; the land alongside of it, neither manured nor fallowed, gave a few bushels per acre. I could give you other parties' names who met with simitar results. I uippose th© cause io be a greater retentive power in the soil to hold water in consequence of its looseness and fulinixfcure with manure ; to be convinced upon the subject yon have only to tread on the soil. It contains so much water that all the seed perishes. Draining with stone or other material will cure this. Labour is too, dear at present." Rules for milking. — Five per cent,, and perhaps ten, can be added to. tho amount of milk obtained from the caws, of this country, if the following rules are inexorably followed :—l.: — 1. Never hurry cows in driving to and from the pasture. 2. Milk as nearly at equal intervals as possible. Half-past 5 in the morning and 6 at nigut are good hours. 3. Be especially tender of the cow at milking times. 4. When seated, draw the milk as rapidly as, possible, being certain always to get it all. o. Never t ilk or think of anything beside whit you are doing when milking. 6. Offer sorae^ caress, and always a soothing word, when yoti approach a cow and when you leave her. The better she loves you, the more free and complete will be her abandon as you sib by her side. We append the not uncommon practice :—l.: — 1. Let some boy turn the cows away, and give him who is fond of throwing stones and switching the hind ones every chance he can get. 2. Milk early in the morning and late at night, dividing the day into two portions, one of 15 hoi\rjtad the other 9. 3. Whack the cow over the b.iek with the stool, or ppeak ' sharply to her if she does not " so ' or "hoist." 4. Milk slowly an'l carelessly, an. l stop at the first slacking of the fluid. 5. Talk and laugh, and perhaps squirt milk at companion milkers, when seated at the cow. 6. Keep the animal in a tremble all the time you are milking her, and when done give her a vigorous kick. — American papek T.'ie status of the scientific gardener is not and cannot be expected to be analogous in t'lis colony with what it ' has lon* been in England, where gardeners employed on a single estate, or in a particular establishment, - are counted by the hundred, and where ample fortunes are yearly expended for the adornment of properties and in the growth, by artificial appliances, of many plants and flowers which here flourish luxuriantly in the border, and require little or no attention. Probably in no newly-settled country does the professional gardener enjoy that consideration which hia intelligence and experience entitle him to expect, and such a man must often, be not a little disgusted by what appears to be the popular estimate of hia qualifications. What will those gentlemen whose advertisements run thus

— " Wanted, a gardensr who mast be able to groom and milk " — say to the following sentiments by Wheatley ?—? — " Gardening is as superior to landscape painting as the reality to the representation. It is an exercise for fancy, and a subject for taste; and being released from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience — the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are within its province. For it is no longer confined to the spots from which it takea its name ; but it regulates also the disposition and embellishment of a park and farm, or even a forest. The business of a gardener is to select and apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them, to discover and to show all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed, to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties." It is time we learnt to discriminate between a mere spade labourer and a gardener ; and the essential difference, which does exist should stimulate the latter to obtain for himself the highest defence of mental culture attainable ; for the time may not be far distant when his practical experience and cultivated taste may be better appreciated and more generally in request. We trust that in the very nature of things we may expect that ere long a mcnfe considerable proportion of the ac-r cumulated wealth of the cVony will be expended in the pleasures and pursuits of gardening, — " Exchange "