FARMING ON SMALL AREAS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 9 April 1927, Page 16

FARMING ON SMALL AREAS.

WINTER FEEDING. We are rapidly approaching the time in New Zealand, when winter feed will be cut ana carted out to stock on pasture, says a Southern paper.) Even now this is done to a. considerable extent, but with the necessity for more intensive farming, it is likely to become general. In Denmark, this method is adopted with a succession of fodder crops to maintain the winter supply of milk and cream, and there is no doubt that in New Zealand, both with sheep and dairy cattle, the carrying capacity, and hence the production of our small farms, could be practically doubled if this course were pursued. With catch crops, it is essential to secure rapid growth, therefore a more liberal dressing of fertiliser is necessary than at other times of the year. Each district has its special requisite in the way of a fertiliser, hut, generally speaking, the North Island is most deficient in'phosphates, and hence responds to an application of superphosphate, more readily than to any other artificial manure. While our soils are rather under-supplied with available phosphorus, this is a. substance which growing ancl milk-yielding animals-re-quire mi cihuiiduncc j it- is therefore <tdvisable to supply any crop which is to be grazed or fed to sheep and cattle with an ample dressing. The later in the Autumn that the crop is sown, the o-reater the necessity for 'a heavy dressing of artificial fertilisers, and as a ruTe 2cwt per acre will not be too much.

DISCS AND CULTIVATORS. The practice of cultivating stubble land for the catch croii with a disc harrow is ont a good one, as it usually serves to increase, rather than eradicate the weeds, and if skim ploughing is not possible, working up with a cultivator will give better results than discing. Follow this cultivation with a very thorough harrowing with the tynes. If the stubble is comparatively clean, crimson clover can be sown, following working with a cultivator, ancl produces an abundance of fodder, hut where at all possible, skim ploughing, harrowing, and mixed seeding of rye corn, black barley and oats will provide the greatest bulk of feed for autumn, winter and spring. Where a field of oats has shaken considerably before harvesting, this seed can be supplemented with a light broadcasting of barley and rye eornj and the field worked with a heavy cultivator and tyne harrows, but where the soil is moist, or harvesting accompanied with wet weather, this work must be taken in hand promptly, or the oats will shoot and cultivation will considerably damage them.