SALTY LAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9040, 25 January 1908, Page 3

SALTY LAND.

lii his annual report, Mr B. C. Ashton, chief chemist to. the Department of Agriculture, states that Mr Job Osborne, who owns a considerable tract of land at Motukarara, Lake Ellesmare flat, Canterbury, has adopted a most ingenious method of dealing with salty land. The land is subject to periodical flooding by the sea in spite of a wall which has been bulit at great cost. The vegetation is that with which we are familiar as indicating salt-meadow. Plants such as Salicornia (known locally as''salt-weed") and grass s if little value, as Deyeuxia, llolcus (Yorkshire fog), and Hordeum murinum (barley-grass), abound. Mr Osborne has attacked the problem by sinking aftesian well* l in all directions. The water discharged washes the-salt out effectively for a certain area around each spring, judging by t ie luxuriant growth of clovers ai d grasses, though close to the spring a dense growth of raupo or bulrush (Typha angustifolia) often results. This method has its limitations, as eventually the pipe rusts through below the ground, and difficulty is experienced in finding it again in order to maintain the flow. The same area of this soil will apparently exhibit great variation in the quality and anount of crop yielded from yeai to year. One year a copious crop of Atriplex patula, variety hastata, spontaneously appeared, and fattenec a goodly number of stock. Anothei year an immense yield of grass-seec was 'obtained. A sample of soil ot which grass and clover were growing was analysed, and found to contaii 0-U66 per cent, salt; another sampli growing salt-weed containing U'fj! per cent. Mangolds do not do wel on this soil.