TOP-DRESSING PAYS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 62, 23 February 1934, Page 12

TOP-DRESSING PAYS

Super and the Slump

FACTS FOR FARMERS By K.P. Years of practical experience give to superphosphate undisputed pride of place in the list of artificial fertilisers used throughout the Dominion. There have arisen other types of phosphatic fertilisers which have enjoyed more or less fleeting popularity, but always there has been a return to superphosphate until now the position occupied by this particular fertiliser is unassailable.

There has probably never been a time time when the real value of superphosphate was so apparent as it is just now. The phenomenal rise m the value of wool and fat lambs is an event of prime national importance, but looked at from the individual point of view the effects are widel.v divergent.

The respective positions of two neighbouring sheepfarmers in the King Country are typical of thousands of others throughout the land, and as such are of interest and value in painting out the moral of my story. Mr X. holds some 600 acres and Mr Z. 300 acres of similar country; in fact, their farms are in the same district and only a mile or so apart. During the period of low prices for wool and fat iambs, Mr X. decided to use more super so that he could carry the best of his ewe lambs and so increase his breeding flock, at the same time fie held his wool simply because there was not enough value in it to make much difference to his financial position. When the slump gave wav to a sensational rise in wool and lambs, Mr X. had four season's wool and over 2000 fat lambs ready to sell—he came out a winner all the way.

Mr Z in the meantime had decided that he must meet the slump by cutmg out top dressing altogether, which he did, with the result that ne just reduced his carrying capacity by half inside three years, and the good prices found him with 300 ewes, one season’s wool, and a few dairy cows, which he had purchased at high prices to help him carry on, instead of the 700 or 800 ewes that his property should have been carrying. Now Mr Z. has to buy in breeding ewes at the very ti fi of the market and also heavy quantities of immure to recover the ground lost during the previous three or four years. It will, almost without exception, be found that those men who depended upon super to see them through have come out right on top. PHOSPHATE DEFICIENCY. The position briefly is this: —AU over New Zealand there is great shortage of phosphate, so much so that crops and pastures treated with phosphatic fertilisers show a marvellous Improvement over those not so treated. Plants of all sorts require their food served up to them in a soluble form. Now superphosphate is the only phosphatic fertiliser that will yield up the whole of its plant food when brought into direct contact with water, consequently superphosphate quickly meets the need of plants for liquid plant food. Superphosphate retains that high degree of solubility under all sorts of climatic conditions. There are circumstances where super may not give of its best; in fact it may even be disappointing, but there is usually a. sound reason. In the absence of lime in the soil, that portion of the phosphate in super not at once taken up by plants is liable to combine with iron or alumina, forming compounds which are but slowly available to plants. To guard against this happening, care should be taken to see that the lime supplies are correctly maintained in the soil or that a certain amount of lime is added to the super before it is applied. The only occasions upon which straight super is likely to fail are when it is applied to heavy swamp lands, peaty country or land known to be very deficient in lime but rich in iron. Under such circumstances a mixture of super and lime should always be used. As the swamp lands are drained, the peaty areas consolidated and the sour lands sweetened by liming, the conditions are being made more favourable for super and the results from this fertiliser will he more satisfactory. MAXIMUM BENEFITS. To get the maximum benefit from top-dressing, the procedure should be first an application of carbonate of lime at the rate of from 5 to 10 cwts. per acre, preferably in March, followed a week or two later by a dressing of super or super and potash salts at the rate of 3 cwts per acre. If the holding is a small one where dairying is being carried out, it will be found profitable practice to top-dress with 2 cwts. of super per acre in the autumn and again with 2 cwts. per acre about November or December. Undoubtedly the autumn is the best time to top-dress grassland in all cases where this is made a once-a-year job, as then both the winter and early spring feed positions are influenced favourably whilst that usual early summer flush is less pronounced.

On sheep country where liming is rarely carried out it will probably pay to use a. mixture consisting of two parts super to one part carbonate of lime at the rate of 2} to 3 cwts. per acre. This also should bo used for preference in the autumn, but will be found a very efficient mixture for use at any time of the year. The superlime mixture should be mixed and given time to revert before it is put on the land. The only object in adding the lime is to allow the phosphate in the super to combine with the calcium in the lime, and this is accomplished only when the-two ingredients are mixed in a heap under cover and allowed to lie undisturbed for 24 to 48 hours; at the end of that time the heap should be turned over again and used as soon as convenient. Simply putting super and Timo together in the drill as it is sown does not give the intimate contact required to cause the reversion of the supar.