FERTILISER AND LIME

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23349, 7 June 1941, Page 6

FERTILISER AND LIME

VARIATION IN APPLICATIONS It Is satisfactory -to note that the Department of Agriculture is at last advocating a more generous application of lime when initial dressings of that commodity are being made. But it apparently has taken the extreme shortage of fertiliser supplies to encourage the Department to take this step. The more progressive officers have lost no opportunity of stressing the disadvantages of niggardly initial lime applications, and from now on a unified policy is likely to be adopted. The Director-General’s statement in the department’s Journal is as follows: — “While in some districts the practice of applying approximately one ton per acre of carbonate of. lime when the pasture is being established has become a regular feature, in many areas smaller quantities in the region of scwt. applied annually only are used. Where lime is deficient —and this occurs over huge areas in the Dominion —recent investigations have demonstrated the fact that until a certain level is reached by the heavier rate mentioned above, the lighter annual dressing is not fully effective.’’ To offset the effect of reduced fertiliser supplies the director advises a greater use of lime.. This is sound advice. Lime' is not in itself a complete substitute for fertiliser, but it will help to offset the lack of it. It was the heavy liming of Southland before artificial fertilisers were much used that provided the basis for the exceptional results secured there, both in cereal and pastoral farming. It is expected that a further statement will be made in the matter of phosphate supplies very shortly—perhaps when the autumn wheat sowing season - is over, which is generally regarded as the early part of June. In the meantime wheatgrowers are being advised that “the matter of the minimum quantities of superphosphate with the wheat crop is worth further consideration,’’ and that “wheatgrowers could also interest themselvess, by trying sowings with less than one cwt. of super an acre this season.” It might be better further to curtail superphosphate topdressing than to .risk using it too lightly for wheat crops. In applying such advice individual growers will have to consider for themselves whether it is safer to treat certain paddocks with the full ration and leave others untreated or spread their supplies lightly over the whole of the area sown. Some fields may he in good enough heart to yield well without any application, whilst it might be courting failure to reduce the on-other fields to less-than IJcwt >