“Acclimatised” Seed

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30342, 18 January 1964, Page 7

“Acclimatised” Seed

A feature of Mr A. D. Doig’s property at Chertsey is the large proportion, of perennial ryegrass and white clover which is very clean from weed grasses such as hair grass and goose grass. The strong growth .of ryegrass is. particularly noticeable in many paddocks. According to Mr G. B. Powell, of Christchurch, who has stripped the ryegrass paddocks on the property for a considerable number of years, one reason why the ryegrass is growing so strongly is because the seed has become “acclimatised” to the property. ■. For the last 10 years it has been the practice on Mr Doig’s farm to sow no ryegrass other than - that grown on the farm. The only exception to this has been half a paddock, which had to be sown in. other seed because the supply of farm-grown seed ran out. In the last 12 years, except for one dry' season when all paddocks were grazed hard and no seed was available, from three to five paddocks on the property have carried sufficient ryegrass seed to warrant stripping. One year, the highest germination of the seed taken, off was only 40 per cent, although it has always been certified as p.p. Mr Powell believes that the good results obtained with the ryegrass which is taken from , and resown on the property is because only the fittest plants survive and' these have adapted them-

selves to the particular soil and climatic conditions. Mr Powell said the •absence of goose’ grass and hairgrass was because they were both awned seeds. When harvested with ’ a stripper, the awns, or tails, were left intact. which enabled a complete separation to be made from the ryegrass seed during machine dressing operations. When harvested with a header, Mr Powell said, some of the awns were knocked off, while the seed of the weeds was passing 'through the header drum. Once the awn was removed the weed seeds could not be separated from the ryegrass during the machine dressing.

Over a period of years since the end of World War 11, a Christchurch man, Mr G. . B. Powell, has sold between 70 and 80 grass seed strippers throughout the South Island. A few have also gone to the North Island and there was one instance of one being shipped to Canada. Primarily, the stripper is designed to take seed from pasture crops which are too light and too uneconomical to be headed. . Mounted on.the front of a truck, the seed stripper operates on the speed of the vehicle and ' the draught created. The seed. head -is forced against a wire screen and the seed is collected on a tray. A second screen is mounted immediately behind and below the first one, where any seed remaining in the head is collected.

The trucks, on good even ground are driven the crop at about 20 to 25 miles an hour'. Mr Powell said the stripper also had an advantage over the normal method of harvesting in . that, the seed collected was more easily machine dressed because it did not knock the awns from weed, seeds, such as hairgrass and goose grass. In addition to the seed stripper, Mr Powell has also designed, a stone picking machine and a water weed cutter for cleaning streams and rivers. About two years ago, Mr Powell took a water weed cutter to England, where he demonstrated it. He said this ■week that it is now being developed there. It has been successfully used for cleaning weeds from rivers in the Canterbury area.