OVERDRILLING ON COAST

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29264, 23 July 1960, Page 9

OVERDRILLING ON COAST

Possible Place Seen

Overdrilling of cereals and grasses may have a useful place on the West Coast where the weather can seriously disrupt normal cultivation procedures. Its use in conjunction with chemical ploughing to remove competitive growth —■ particularly weeds—would seem to hold out promise. Farmers attending farm schools at Westport, Cronadun and Maruia saw a demonstration ot equipment used for this work—a linkage disc seeder and a» rigid coulter hoe drill fitted with disc cutters. Mr D. J. Davies, fields instructor, Department of Agriculture, Christchurch, who has experimented with overdrilling in Canterbury, particularly on town milk supply farms, supervised the demonstrations and spoke to farmers. On the property of Mr 13. Relling at Cronadun each implement sowed a series of similar cereal and fertiliser and. cereal, grass and fertiliser mixtures into a grass dominant perennial ryegrass, crested dogsbail, Yorkshire ‘fog and white clover pasture, with some flat weeds. The cereals included Garton oats, Arawa wheat, Cape and Wong barleys and C.R.D. precorn; Italian ryegrass was used in some combinations, and lewt of nitrolime and lewt of superphosphate. At Maruia clover as well was successfully introduced into sparse tussock by both machines.

In three cases lime pelleted seed was used. It may prevent birds from taking the seed so readily where it is not completely covered, reduce burning of seedlings that is associated with nitrogen, and hasten root development as a result of the physical effect on the structure of lime responsive soils.

On a demonstration farm at Westport overdrilling has given particularly good results where 101 b of short rotation ryegrass and 21b of white clover was introduced ’ with nitrolime and superphosphate. Wong barley was up in only three days after introduction and was fed off in six weeks. Garton oats introduced at the same time did not come to anything.