THE FARMERS' COLUMN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 36, 14 August 1880, Page 4

THE FARMERS' COLUMN.

- «' EXPERIMENTAL FARM. Some time since, an experimental farm was established in Victoria. It is 'rather an extensive concern, containing 4,500 acres of land. An interesting report was published early in this year ; and it appears that the condition of the farm was very satisfactory. The farm is divided into portions ranging from 40 acres to nearly 8000. The whole has been . fenced. During the year, or rather ten months, 247 acres were gurbbed * -and cleared^ and of these 120 acres .^"weie ploughed, 10 acres being subv' -soiled to the depth of 22 inches for 'the reception of vines, olives, and other fruit trees. Several patches of wheat, oa£», and barley, were sowed in order to ascertain the difference in the results from shrivelled and plump :grain, the manager giving it as his opinion that,' though the appearance of the corn from the former was equal to that from the latter, he did not •think ihe result would be so. The kinds sown were — shrivelled wheat, Loudon straw purple wheat, Major Plain's purple straw wheat, some manured and some not ; white Tuscan wheat, white Paris wheat, Molt's prize white and red wheats — the last having taken the first prize at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. Some of the land had been cultivated on the Lois-Weedon system — that of leaving part of the land fallow in the form of trenches — but the cost of the trenches, when done by hand,' was too expensive. The other grains sown were potato, Norway, white Tartarian, and Swiss oaljs; English and Cape barley and rye, and in all cases the seed treated "with lime and urine was up two days before all the others. The seed ib not allowed to remain in the pickle, but is placed in a half-bushel Basket which will not let the seed through; the basket is immersed in the mixture, the fine grain rises to the surface and is skimmed off, and the basket is kept in the pickle two minutes, and then removed and drained off ; the seed is then turned on to a sheet to dry, sprinkled with dry wood ashes and" lime, and sowed soon afterwards.