The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. SATURDAY, FEB. 25, 1888.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2438, 25 February 1888, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

SATURDAY, FEB. 25, 1888.

Kuual and exact justice to :d: men, Ot* whatsoever state or persnasion, religious or political.

Laugh as has been the arert. sown with wheat in Waikato last season, from all wo hear it is likely to be still more largely increased in the next. The question naturally forces itself into consideration, how can the fertility of the soil be maintained it' year after year thiri drain upon its sources is to be continued 1 In one instance that we know, in the Hautapu district, grain crops have been taken year after year in succcssion from the same land, and

t.lic. yield has continued to inereise, but. this was on a somewhat retentive soil, rich in humus, thoroughly worked, and year by year ploughed slightly deeper. Such cases will be exceptional, though on many farms deeper ploughing will be found to solve the diiliculty to a very great extent. One of the very best wheat crops in Waikato has been taken this season from very indifferent grass land in the vicinity of Hamilton, ploughed seven inches deep and thoroughly worked. It is a peculiarity on some of the land in Waikato that the sub-strata, as observation will show, are as fertile as the surface soil, and where this is the case the farmer has the remedy for exhaustion close at hand and cheap. .But these are the exception. The bulk of the land must look to external applications for the maintenance of its fertility. Turnips in the rotation, fed off by sheep or cattle, are the first resort of the farmer, and here, where such a green crop can often be stolen, are invaluable. It must be remembered, however, that in feeding off a crop of turnips, nothing like what the soil has produced is returned to it. The bones and the carcass and the very carbon consumed to maintain the heat of the stock, are all so much drain upon the soil. The loss of fertility from the removal of 20,000 gallons of milk per annum, producing, say, 3i tons of butter, from a farm of 200 acres, has been estimated to amount to a loss per acre of 51bs of nitrogen, 1-ilbs of potash, and l ; J-ll>s of phosphoric acid,supposing no food not grown upon the farm to be used. The loss by the feeding of store stock would not be so great, and it will be urged that the turnip fed land has invariably produced grain in the next rotation. The question is, how long will it continue to do so 1 The manure manufactured from the turnip crop is brought readily available to the grain crop succeeding it, but to cio this the stores of fertility in the soil are drawn upon at an annual loss and the drain cannot always go Oil.

This difficulty is got over cheaply and effectually by the growing of green crops, not for the feeding or soiling of cattle and sheep, but for ploughing in in a green state. It is this that makes wheat at home succeed best and take its place in the rotation after the clover lea, bai ley sown with clover* following the feed off turnips or swedes in the regular four course system. Very much of our Waikato land is deficient in humus or vegetable matter. Much of it is not fit for feeding stock with green crops. Mr J. J. Barugli, of Wartle, has opened up a new system this year, by a carefully conducted experiment, fir dealing with the not inconsiderable area of land which like his is too poor to produce a profitablegraincropand would with difficulty and at considerable expanse only be made fit for the growth of turnips or swedes. The land experimented upon is close compact soil deficient in vegetable matter [n February, last year, Mr Barugh sowed some six acres with mustard seed, at the rate of lOlbs of seed to the acre, and with the mustard two cwt of superphosphates, per acre. By winter the mustard had grown to from twenty to twentyfour inches high, when it was ploughed in, a drag chain being used to lay it neatly under the furrow, and the land was sown in wheat without any further manure. On some parts of the field the mustard missed, and where this was the case, despite the superphosphate sown with the mustard, the wheat was not eighteen inches high, thin, and small headed. Where the mustard was ploughed in the wheat was between five and six feet in length. From the number of sheaves in s ook, Mr Barugh, who is a practical home farmer, estimated that his crop would yield 30 bushels to the acre and this on land, which without the green crop ploughed in would return little more than the seed. Mustard seed can be procured at the rate of three pence per lb. One of the chief recommendations to this method of manuring the soil is neither its cheapness nor its simplicity, but that the mustard is a stolen crop, sown in February when the stubble of one crop can be broken up in preparation for the green crop, which will produce a grain crop in the succeeding season. The experiment is one which every farmer can try for himself on a small scale, and now is the time to do so. Where it works the same wonders as it did for Mr Barugh, at Wartle, the ploughing in of green crops will cause a revolution in grain-growing in Waikato. So satisfied is that gentleman with the result of his experiment that he will sow a largo area in mustard during the next few weeks to be succeeded by a crop of wheat next season, although so discouraged had he been with the non-success of wheat-growing on the Wartle estate that, until the result of the experiment referred to, he had abandoned the idea of further wheat cultivation.