LIMING.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20878, 10 June 1933, Page 18

LIMING.

A DOUBTER. The results from liming in New Zealand are so variable (says an Auckland expert) that money should be spent cautiously on it in those areas which do not present reliable conclusive evidence that liming is profitable. If land does not respond satisfactorily to standard dressings of phosphates, then lime is well worth a trial in association with the phosphates. Apart from field trials, no method of ascertaining the amount of lime that may profitably be applied to land has been shown to be reliable.

The above writer apparently is ignorant of experience in Southland and Otago, and to an extent in Canterbury, or he would not subscribe to the above opinion. If he went down to the southern provinces and told the farmers there that lime was a dubious proposition he would raise something of a laugh. His assertion in the final part of the paragraph ignores the years of practical southern experience as to the amount of lime that "may be profitably applied," etc. The southern farmers have discovered for themselves the quantities and benefit of lime without any need for theorising. Until they know more of the subject these northern "experts" should concentrate on some aspect of farming in which farmers are not so wellinformed.

With the expansion of perennial ryegrass and white clover seed production that has taken place in recent seasons in Hawke's Bay in particular and also in a slightly lesser degree in Poverty Bay and in the South Island, the need for a market expansion has caused certain outsids markets to be probed (says a northern report). The Hawke's Bay Association of Certified Seed Growers is turning its attention elsewhere, and inquiries are at present being prosecuted in the United States regarding the likelihood of a demand on that market for ryegrass and «lover seed.