COVER CROPS.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17646, 26 December 1922, Page 3

COVER CROPS.

EXPERIMENTS AT NELSON. (SPECIAL TO " THE PRESS.") NELSON, December 35. Much interest is being taken in the experiments conducted by the Oa.ivthron Institute on Messrs B-isley Bros.' property at Mildura. Tho experiments arc a. continuation of the cover crop experiments which wero carried out during the winter. Ti:e cover crop experiments included p!ots of lupins, horsebe.ins, and 1 tares with oats. The object of the experiments was to rscertfiin how the crops could be stioces-jfi'lly grown, and also their relative merits for use in orchards on the Moutcre Hills. Tho cover crop experiments demonstrated that the use of two tons of ground limestone and scwt of superphosphates per acre was essentitl as an initial treatment of the land in securing the best results with horse-beans and Scotch tares. In the case of lupins, it was fouud that lime was not so essential, but tho use of a phosphntic manure such as superphosphate waslecessary in order to obtain a satisfactory growth. The need for soil inoculation fnr both horse-beans and tares was clearly proved, buti in the case of b';ue lupins it did not appear so necessary. One interesting feature of the winter experiments was the good results obtained with horse-beans and tares with oats. Both of these crops gave much higher crop yields than was the case with blue lupins. From this fact, it might be expected that both tare :md horse-bsaii cover crons would possess a higher m.v nurial value than' the lupin crop. One of the experiments which is now in progress has been designed to test the manurial value of tho cover crops grown in the autumn. For this purpose oats have been cbxsen as the test crop. The cover crops were p oughed in towards the end of Julv, and the oats' were sown at] the beginning; of September. The oats have made exoelknt growth over all tho plot wlore good! cover crops have been turned in, but on tho untreated plots where the cover crops wero poor, the oats are correspondingly bad. The oats from small measured areas on the various p.ots have been out and weighed. The crop weights show that the tares cover crop lias resulted in the highest increase in tfio oats. Horse-b?ans have given the next best results, and lupins hsive given tho lowest increase in the yield of oats. In the case of the plot where tares treated with two ground limestone .and five hundredtvoighv of superphosphates were ploughed in, the oat crop is four times greater thinn that obtained from untreated land. Another experiment which- will Be of grpat interest to farmers on Moutere Hills soil is connected with the growing of fodder crops. A field of 19 nores has been sot aside for this purpose, and a start haa been made bv conducting experiments on a large scale with* tares and oats, which were found to do so well with proper treatment in the winter cover crop trials. Although spring sowings of tares with oats do not give such good results as autumn sowings, very good growth has been obtained on fome of the plots. The following shows the green weights of the crop out from plots treated in different ways:— Plot No. I—Treatment, untreated green produce per acre, 3cwt. No. 2—scwt, Nauru rock phosphate, 12cwt. No. 3—4}ewt, basic slag, SOcwt. j No. 4— i% cwt, blood and bone mixture,' 50c wt. The initial cost of treatment of the land is high, but it must) be remembered that the lime will exert :m influence on the soil for a period of eight years. It i 9 anticipated that' for the next three or four years land which Iras had tho initial treatment will grow good leguminous crops with the annual application of 2icwt superphosphate per acre.