CARE OF PASTURES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 30 September 1933, Page 7

CARE OF PASTURES

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF THEM

NEW ZEALAND’S MAJOR “CROP”

(Broadcast talk from Station IYA, Auckland, by W. Alexander, Agricultural Adviser, Kempthome Prosser and Co., Ltd.)

According to the latest available statistics covering the. Agricultural and Pastoral industries carried on within the Dominion there are some 31,300,000 acres in pasture; of this area 17,000,00-0 acres represent sown or cultivated grasses and the balance approximately 14,500,000 acres, repre.sets native .grasses, tussock, etc. The total area in arable (that is really under- crops of all kinds including orchards) is 1,250,000 acres, so :that ox the whole occupied area in the Dominion 75 per cent, is in grass and only 3 per cent, in all. other crops. From these figures it wili be realised that the care and treatment of pastures constitutes the most important task undertaken on the farm lands of this Dominion. It is the pastures of the country that carry the livestock which, in turn, convert crops and grasses into marketable commodities in the form of meat, wool and dairy produce. It is perfectly true, as stated on one occasion ;by His Excellency the GovernorGeneral, that we New Zealanders live on grass. No matter how much importance we attach to the growing of other crops, and undoubtedly they are important, grass will always be the staple food of this Dominion.

Whilst it is not suggested here that farmers should concentrate all their energies on the improvement of grassland to the exclusion of all else on the farm, it is suggested in all seriousness that time and money spent in that direction will quickly produce very profitable results. There are many; men, particularly those of the old school, who still go to no end of trouble in the preparation of land for the growing of root crops, but who more or less leave the grass land to look after itself.

In Taranaki great interest is taken in the annual root-growing competitions conducted under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture and there is no doubting the fact that these competitions have- been, responsible for some outstanding crops of swedes, mangolds and carrots. A perusal of the reports covering these competitions ■ T disclose* the fact that elaborate cultivation and the application of fertilisers, sometimes in excess of 10 hundredweights per acre, are factors making for success. Have you ever -considered what would happen to your pastures if by any chance you could be persuaded to treat them as liberally? And yet 1 see no reason why you should treat your annual crops a bit better than you should treat your pastures. If 5 or 6 or even 10 hundredweights of fertiliser per acre is profitable on swedes or mangolds, it would be equally profitable on grass.

ASSORTED PASTURES. One of the very great difficulties associated with any discussion on the care of pastures is the widely varied nature of the pastures themselves. Just look around you and take stock of the different types of grassland in your own neighbourhood; or better still, look at the problem as we have to look at it, that is as a provincial or as a Dominion one. I think you will agree that a general talk on the care of pastures would not be of much use if it did not take into consideration the different specimens you have to work with. It seems to me that we want to adopt a policy of “levelling upwards” to the end that you will all have firstclass pastures, or at least know how to get them, before we can safely get down to generalities regarding treatment.

For all practical purposes we can sub-divide our pastures into groups as follows:

1. Purely native pastures on rough country. 2. Surface sown after bush burns. 3. Deteriorated pastures. 4. Paspalum pastures. 5. Cultivated pastures.

The first-named we can leave out altogether, as the very nature and extent of the country involved makes control measures, other than control by stock together, with the elimination of rabbits, almost impossible of application. This is not the class of pasture we want to consider at this stage. The second group, namely bush burns, does sometimes lend itself to treatment, particularly where the country is not too steep. It is the common experience of settlers on country of this nature that the pastures sown after a good clean burn do very well for a few years, then they begin to go back until finally the • good grasses die out and low fertility species and fern come in. Briefly, the reason for this retrograde movement of pastures on burnt country is this: The burning of the original bush left a substantial deposit of ash rich in mineral plant foods, particularly lime, phosphates and potash, and for some years after sowing the grasses and clovers had this supply to draw upon. During this period the new pastures probably carried a good lot of stock and they in turn consolidated and manured the land to the benefit of the pasture. As the supply of mincials was shortened through a steady consumption by pasture plants, the high fertility species weakened and gave way to lower fertility species, a process which was repeated until finally the country found its level in the danthonia, brown top, fescues and fern, which arc in possession of much of the deteriorated land to-day. To prevent this deterioration taking place it is [necessary that supplies of lime and ■phosphates at least be applied to the lush burn pastures before they start

to go back —it is never just as successful after the 'deterioration has set in. The necessary treatment is not expensive. and could easily be applied to a very large proportion of bush country now in grass. Use as a topdressing just a simple mixture of lime and super and the grasses you want will remain dominant. Of course a good deal of the deterioration that set in was mie to the poor class of seed used on many bush burns. It is notorious that any old mixture of weeds and grasses that cannot be separated will always find a market as “special for bush bums”; buyers would be well advised to keep off’ that sort of stuff for the simple reason that if you use it your future pasture is doomed the day you buy the seed. D ETERI ORAT ED PAST UE ES The question here is how can this be brought back? Well, the question cannot be answered just as easily as it is asked. Of course it is largely a matter of soil fertility and the first step in the direction of improving the sward !is to build up the plant food content of the soil. Never forget, however, that the fertilisers used in the building up of fertility cannot change danthonia into ryegrass, not bid-a-bid into white clover. Fertilisers can and do improve the feeding value of the pastures to which they are applied, so that topdressed danthonia will make a better pasture than will the same grass without topdressing. If cultivation was possible the quickest way to better pastures on these deteriorated areas would be to plough and re-sow in permanent pasture species, but on most of the country concerned ploughing is out of the question. The most that can be hoped for is that the stock carrying capacity can be increased to the extent that fern can De controlled and the pastures generady cleaned up. Topdressing with super is likely to prove the most efficient and most economical means of improving carrying capacity. Stock can be moved about from ridge to ridge simply .!>y the use of super; this fertiliser will so influence the quality of the feed that stock will concentrate on where it has been used. It should not be necessary to state here that complete recovery cannot be attained with one solitary dressing of about two hundredweights per acre; each dressing applied will make for more improvement and one must be patient and not look for miracles when starting out to improve deteriorated hill pastures. A common fault on much of this deteriorated hill country is that the paddocks are far too large to permit of heavy concentration of stock. If control by means of cattle is to, be successful, you must be able to hold the cattle just where you want them and this is possible only where fencing is adequate. PASPALUM.

Paspalum occupies a very prominent place in pastures in the Auckland Province and its economic importance is no longer in doubt. Paspalum is unquestionably a valuable pasture plant so long as it is kept under strict control. Its chief period of usefulness is, of course; during the dry weather period following the New Year and extending into the late autumn. A paspalum and rve-grass combination is very hard to beat as a high producing pasture as the two species arc not competitive. Rye-grass gives of its best during the winter, spring and early summer, fading away as the dry weather period advances when paspalum comes forward to take over the load. With the approach of winter frosts and cold weather, the paspalum in turn gives way to the rye-grass which, from then onwards, takes up the running. Now this desirable state of affairs can be maintained only so long as the paspalum is kept strictly under control. There must be no such thing as allowing paspalum to get away to seed and finally dying down on the paddock; if that sort of thing is permitted the ryegrass is simply smothered out of existence and very soon the pasture becomes almost entirely paspalum. Paspalum patures want plenty of harrowing, not merely a tickling of the surface to spread manure, but a heavy, penetrating, root-pruning harrowing that will definitely prevent its forming a matted surface or that will break up such a surface once it has been formed. Paspalum should also be kept short grazed and if necessary the mower should be used at the first sign of its wanting, to run away. Treated in this way paspalum will not be looked upon as a curse as is sometimes the case where control measures have not been applied. A disappointing feature of paspalum pastures is the time they take to come away in the spring; well, this plant is definitely not an early grass and no amount of manuring seems to be able to make it change its nature. The only thing to do here is to harrow very severely during the winter months and then introduce some certified perennial rye-grass—up to 1 bushel per acre—as this is the only grass that will show an early spring growth in response to topdressing fertilisers. Heavy harrowing in the winter time, heavy stocking in the summer, the use of the mower where necessary and liberal top-dress-ing are the important factors in retaining complete control over paspalum swards.

CULTIVATED PASTURES. By cultivated pastures, I mean all that' area of grassland sown out in the best of English grasses and clovers which provides the bulk of the pasturage for our dairy herds and for ewe flocks where fat lamb raising is the leading industry. The area so represented runs into many millions of acres and extends from Kaitaia to Bluff. There are no rainfall boundaries of importance to this type of pasture, nor are there any important limiting factors in the way of soil conditions or altitude. From coast to coast, from sea level to mountain . ranges, and almost, if not actually, from the Equator to the Poles, we find conditions that seem to suit grass. No other single crop is so adaptable to local conditions of soil or climate, and no other single crop is so versatile in the matter of uses to which it is put as is grass. No wonder we value it and no wonder it now occupies such an im-

portant place in the field of -science and research as well as in the fields; of every-day practical agriculture. Grass as a name is applied loosely to a wide range of pasture plants; rye, timothy, cocksfoot, dogst.ail, fescues, fog poas, danthonia, brown top and numerous others are all included in the general term “grass.” It is an association of grass and clover species that goes to make lip our pastures and those pastures are just as good and no better than the individual species contained therein.

One of the difficulties associated with pastures establishment is that, comparatively few farmers are able to distinguish between the various species of plants in their pastures, with the result that they go on treating a •poor one as though it was a good one, and, sometimes abusing a good one as though it was of little value. No doubt every man on the land has his ideal pasture in his mind’s eye, but very few have them where they can make use of them.

THE IDEAL SWARD. Perennial rye-grass of a leafy, truly permanent type, in the proportion of about 70 to 75 per cent., a sprinkling of Timothy and Poa Trivialis and the ' balance a selected type of persistent white clover is probably the nearest thing we know to an ideal pasture. Many farmers have set themselves out to sow such a pasture, but through purchasing seed from poor type strains they have not secured what: they were after. The fault does not always lie with the farmer as he has bought his seed on the understanding that he was getting the right stuff, but there are other occasions when buyers have definitely sacrificed quality to price and have been paying for it" ever since. Sometimes the land is at fault; it is either too raw, too sour or too wet to sustain satisfactory pastures. Here it becomes first a question of draining and liming as a preliminary to the sowing down of permanent grass. A good pasture, properly manured and carefully handled, will, in a district of moderate rainfall, yield up to, and possibly over, IS tons of green matter per acre in twelve months. The treatment, necessary to maintain such a yield is an annual application of Carbonate of Lime at- the rate of from 5 to 8 cwts. per acre; an- annual application or supe- given in two dressings—March and November —of 2 cwts. per acre each time and. a dressing of potash where necessary. In addition to this the grazing must at all times be kept under strict control; the pastures should not be eaten right down to the ground, nor should they be permitted to get too far away before being stocked. For sheep the ideal stage at which to stock up is when 1 the rye-grass is from three to four inches long and for cattle when it is twice that length. Such gross has the feeding value of a concentrated food like oil cake, and so long as the essential mineral constituents are kept up to standard, stock will thrive on this feed. Regular harrowing to spread the droppings is an important feature of pasture management. BELOW PAR. There is a substantial area of grassland that is just below par and which could bo substantially improved at little cost. It may be that an original poor type of rve-grass has left the pasture low in this particular constituent, with a correspondingly greater percentage of low fertility grasses. It may be that too much cocksfoot has been sown in the mixture, or mixtures; containing a number of poor species have been used. Of course such things as cutting every season for hay, being allowed to get away from stock, starved for fertilisers or grazed without harrowing may have played a part in lowering the standard of a pasture. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that we have a few million acres of below-par pasture and we want to improve them. This job calls for drastic harrowing to open up the surface and to pull out or destroy as much as possible of the poor stuff. This job of harrowing should not be done by the owner himself unless he is fully conversant with the results to be expect-' ed, far better to employ someone to do the job for you and when you think he has knocked your paddock about sufficiently, tell him to start all over again and then go away and leave him. When the paddock has been harrowed almost to breaking point, give it a dressing of Carnonate of Lime and follow this a week or two later with 4 cwts. of super through which you have mixed half a bushel of certified perennial ryegrass per acre; a further stroke with the harrows to cover the seed and then shut tbc gate. Possibly | the autumn is the best time to carry out this work of renovation but quite good results may be secured by doing it now.

WORK FOR. THE PLOUGH. Then we have that sort of down-and-out collection of twitch, weeds and bare spaces that is sometimes called a pasture and from which impossible things are expected. There are some plants that do not respond -even to good fertilisers simply because they arc more at homo in what might be •termed the rural slum areas. Agrostis, rib grass, cats ear, copeweed, fescues, all seem to live on, where better stuff would fail, but then that is usually a matter of soil fconditiions. Land that is cold, sour and hungry cannot be expected to carry other than poor pasture plants; such plants yield nothing to the wealth of the farmer, in fact in time they would turn him cold, sour and hungry also. There is only I one thing to do with that sort of grassI land and that is to put the plough into it as in doing so you will put new life into it. It’s no use wasting time and money trying to bring that sort of pasture back into something worth while by top-dressing and harrowing, it will be cjuicker to -do it by ploughing. Turn it over during the winter and let it lie fallow so that fhe i\eajthcr can get into it to sweeten it. 'Work it up during the summer, lime it (and take a crop of early roots or green | fodder out of it and then put it, back i into good pasture in the autumn. It | you don’t want the roots or fodder crop, leave it to fallow, right through until the autumn, it will be all the ■better for it and then you can look forward to a good pasture in the spring. Don’t stint the manure either when you sow the paddock down or later, as hungry land cannot do its work satisfactorily. Remember the better pasture, the better will be the response to the fertilisers used, on it. If you want rye-grass standard in your pastures, you must give them ryc- ■ grass treatment not- allowing them to : get cold, sour or hungry.

Zealand. It was believed, too, that the Chinese and Japanese were at last realising the superiority of wool over cotton* from the point of view of health and durability. One of the principal methods of publicity which it was hoped to use both overseas and in New Zealand was the organisation of pageants and carnivals. The wool publicity committee, when it was set up two years ago, had decided that this was an excellent means of advertising the more dainty types of woollen goods.

NEED EOR PERSONAL CONTACT

Following the .success two years ago of the “wear more wool” campaign, held in Christchurch, the Department of Industries and Commerce granted a small fund for the furtherance of this propaganda. Numerous efforts were made to build up the fund, and several attempts were made by the trustees, to secure the co-operation of the farming business and manufacturers in a rehabilitation scheme that would benefit all sections of the community. The difficult position of trade in New Zealand then, made it imposisble to organise a sufficiently extensive scheme .to help the funds very materially. The trustees had decided on a line of . action necessitating personal contact with the manufacturers of woollen goods overseas, and to achieve that end Miss Howey had been given her mission. Before leaving New Zealand Miss I-lowey had ben in touch with organisations qverseas, including the Empire Marketing Board, the chamber of commerce of Roubaix, and the National Economic Expansion Association of France, all of whom replied very sympathetically, promising all possible assistance. The length of her stay abroad will depend upon how much can be achieved, and it is her intention to go to France, where she will make contact with the organisations with whom the trusteese have already been in communication.