ON THE LAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9118, 18 June 1908, Page 7

ON THE LAND.

■CULTIVATION EXPERIMENTS

The result of .last season's experiments .carried out by University Ccd,lege, Beading, at the College Farm, fthinfield, have Just been .published in pamphlet form, says a London paper. A most interesting experiment was that of testing the influ■ence of weeds and hoeing on crop yield. With this object in view a quarter of an acre of Globe mangels were sown on April 2r>th, 1907. After the plants were set out, the plot was divided into live equal parts (each one-twentieth of an acre). 1. One lot was simply left to combat with the weeds, and total yield on this plot being 15J tons an acre. 2. The second plot was kept clean by hand weeding only, no hoeing being .done after setting out the plants. This yielded at' the rate of 40 tons an acre. 3. A third, which was kept clean by repeated hoeings, yielded practically the same weight of roots (39J tons an cere) as No. 2. 4. When only two hoeings were resorted to the yield was 37j|i tons an acre; and 5. when only once hoed, the weight of mangels grown amounted to 33J tons per acre. The difference between the weight of mangels grown on the plot that was ktpt clean and that where no weeding took place amounted to GO per cent, of the crop. The difference between hoeing once and hoeing twice amounts to four lons an acre. The rjsui's obtained, which are deta lad in the report, are very suggestive, but it would be advantageous if the .experiment were repeated .during 2i dry season. The results obtained by the application of different myogenous maiures on mangels are also interesting. The manures used were calcium, cynamide. nitrate of find!, nitrate of lime, and sulphate of ammonia. The manures {at the rate i f lg ewe to the acre) were applied just after the young plants were out; The leaves of the plants were greatly damaged by the cyanide, and at first looked aa if they would not recover. Later on, hotoever, they pushed forth, and an excellent crop of roots whs obtained, amounting u> 35 tons in Acre. Nitrate of lime eeetns lo ftnvo done very well indeed, the crop yieldeu oeing at the rate of 37 lons an acre. Tiiis was closdly followed by nitrate of soda, which yielded 36£ tons an acre. An acre of ground on the farm carried a crop of maize. Two kinds of seed were used —viz., Giant Caragua and White Horse Tooth. The seed, which was diillecl on the last nay of May, was place:) three inches deep, in rows 24 inches apart. An application of 10 loadi of dung and ikwt of superphosphate was made to the acre; lewt of nitiate of soda was also applied as a top-dressiiK . The yir-ld of green fodder per acre arncumed to 45 tons lSJcwt in uiu case of the former, and 49 t( us 2J cwt in the case of the latter. The report alto contains a good deal of ir-furniatioii as to the effect of manure? on graos land, and tl e mulis of experiments on the laying clown of permanent gia s land. An these 1-jst experiments have only been down for a short period, it is too early tj draw any definite conclusions.