AGRICULTURAL NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9137, 9 July 1908, Page 7

AGRICULTURAL NOTES.

.WHAT ONE PHR CENT. OF DOCK SEEi) MEANS.

It will be granted by all farmers ;.and gardeners that weeds are infinitely troublesome to them. It is conclusively proved that weeds may be • easily spread in this way, and at the International Conference on SeedTesting, held in 1906, at Hamburg, i.Dr. Stebkr, quoted a case in which a clover sample, weighing 550 grammes, contained 4,500 seeds of Ribgrass, 2,240 seeds of wild carrot, 1,140 seeds of chicory, and 151 seeds • of clover dodder, .besides hundreds of • other weed seeds. Other classes of seeds may simi- . larly contain much impurity in the way of weed seeds, and such samples should on no account be sold. ' One per cent, nf dock seed in an ordinary gi-ass or clover mixture may mean len or more dock plants per square yard. 1 Many, cases in which weed seeds have infested agricultural seed to a serious extent <:i uld be quoted with ease, . si.vs the "Rural World," and we would impress on every reader ,tl.e desirability—nay, the vital importance—of rowing only pure clean reed, : free from weed seeds, and of high germinating capacity. A guarantee of purity and germinating capacity should bp asked.for when purchasing seed; but if the seed has been pur- ■ chased without such a guarantee, and any suspicion of impurity is EUggested by a careful examination of the •seed, then samples should at once be submitted to expert examination be■fore sowing takes place.

NEW I-OTATO DISEASE

Profegsor E. S. Salmon delivered an address before members of the Market Gardeners, Nurserymen and Farmers' Association in London on "black scab," or "warty disease" cf potatoes, which he described as a serious menace. It was most important that' !th=y should awaken the Board of Agriculture to the necessity of dealing with the disease under the Destructive Insects . and Pests Act. If allowed to spread througn the whole of the country and to reach Ireland it would cause losses amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds, and unUss dealt with promptly it would attain a magnitude vthat it would be impossible to check. The Board of Agriculture should make it a notifiable disease.