FARM AND HELD

Lake County Press, Issue 2795, 24 July 1919, Page 7

FARM AND HELD

ORIGINAL ARTICLES (By F. 0.8.)

FARM EXPERIMENTS. In order that a farmer can get a clear conception of the advantage of the use of chemical fertilisers on the soils cultivated by him, it is strongly? to ho recommended that ho should carry out from year to year experiments on a small scale on his own farm. They need not be made with scientific exactitude, hut if regularly watched, and managed with a tolerable amount of care, the results could not fail to afford interesting and useful information. The questions to ho put to the soil arc:—Does it require nitrogen, phosphoric acid, or potash? And then: Which forms of these constituents suit best his crops? And, finally: What respective quanti- , ties can be applied singly or in combinai tion to produce crops yielding the most i profitable results? \ VALUE OF LUCERNE. , The Professor of Agronomy at the Wisconsin Agricultural College, U.S.A., holds that through raising lucerne a farmer can realise £2O per acre in feed value. It come snext to silage for I keeping cows in good condition, and it goes with the hitter as a feed. It is excellent for fattening sheep, but it is not advisable to feed it to hovses that are being worked, although for brood mares and horses that are not beinji worked it would brighten up their coats and put them in good fat condition. With regard to raising it, the abovementioned expert states that it can be J grown on all kinds of soil—sandy clay | lands, black loam, etc. The most vital . points arc that the land bo well drained, | it must have fertility and tilth and sur- , face as well as under drainage. Lucerne ( is a very tender plant, and will not } grow on land where there is standing \ water, or where there is wafer standing near the surface. Sloping land is good, ( and effective under-drainage is most ( important, as lucerne grows very deep, ? and must not have wet feet. J In the United States it has been ] found necessary to inoculate with bae f teria certain -soils which are deficient in nitrogen, as lucerne takes more nitrogen from the soil than .any other crop. ; An experiment was made in which one g field was inoculated with bacteria, and a crop of five tons to the acre taken off j it. Another field that was not ino'U- v latod only produced l\ tons, and the third year it had to be ploughed up, g as the crop was not worth harvesting. c The United States colleges send out free to farmers the bacteria to inoculate their farms. „ A sour soil is no good for lucerne. ~ and the best means of testing whether , ( , a paddock contains acid or not is to bury a piece of blue litmus paper (obtainable at any chemist's) in the < ground. It will turn red if there is any acid present. Should this be the case, lime should he added, common slack lime, and about a ton or two to the acre, (hie or two applications will not hurt th 9 soil, but if practised too long it will burn it. Lucerne should be cut when the new shoots commence to grow from the crown and the blossoms begin to appear on the outside of the field. Care . should be taken to keep the leaves, 1 which fall off verv easily if they are : handled when dried too soon. The j leaves contain 24 per cent, protein, and form (JO per cent, of the feeding value. The crop should lie cut in the morning or evening. In the afternoon of a good hay day it will be found that the lucerne leaves are wilted. MOLASSES FOR STOCK. Some experiments upon feeding molasses are of interest. In order to ascertain what is actually the value c I sugar in stock feeding, the Yorkshire Agricultural High School Farm has 1 issued a report on its bullock-i'eedinj! experiments conducted during three winters. In the first year's cxperimoms three pens of cattle were put up. In one of these tho cattle were fed on a ration consisting of 7011). roots (pulped). 71h. hay, 71b. oat straw chaffed, 21b. decorticated cotton seed meal, 21b. dried grain, lib. linseed cake, and 41b. crushed maize. In pen No. 2 tho animals had the same rations as in pen No. 1, except that 211). of molasses was given in place of the 701b. roots In pen No. 3 tho animals had the s„me rations as in pen No. 2, except that 31b. crushed wheat was given in place of the 411). maize. The animals in pen No. 1, which got the ration of 701b. roots, gave decisively the best, results, and left a balance of £1 lGs. 2jjd. per head for labour and other expenses, the balances left by the animals in pens Nos. 2 and 3 were £1 ss. 3|d. and £1 Is. OJd. per head respectively. In the second year's experiments the gluten feed was tested against an equal weight of a mixture of barley meal and 1 undecorticated cotton cake in equal { parts. In this case the animals getting I the mixture of barley meal and cotton 1 cake gave tho best results. In the third year's experiments roots wero tested against molasses as before, and sliced roots wero also tested against pulped roots. The pen of animals getting roots again came out better than those getting the molasses, and the pen of animals which got tho sliced roots came out decisively better than those getting the roots pulped. The results are thus summarised:"These experiments teach that molasses .although much relished by stock, cannot satisfactorily take the place of 1 j roots in a nutritive ration. Further ex- ' ! pertinents, however, are desirable to > 1 determine whether equally good results . j might not be obtained from molasses as '..from roots if- tho .bulk given in each • case were the same. Molasses, how- : ever, may serve a useful purpose in the ; feeding of young stock when other food- '. j stuffs are scarce, and in the wav of ' ! making other foodstuffs palatable. It ' i does not seem that gluten feed pos--1:' sesses feeding properties equal to a I mixture of undecorticated cotton cake j ' and barley meal. Then, again, ah better results were obtained from sliced - than from pulped roots, it would seem that the extra trouble involved in the ( case of the latter is not waranted." l ' „ ADVANTAGE OF LEGUMINOUS f PLANTS. S One advantage in growing a legui tinous plant for this purpose is that _ ,t does not rob tho soil of nitrogen as does non-leguminous crops, but on the " contrary leaves tho land enriched by the nitrogen contained in the stubble y and roots after the crop has been <* taken off. This is a very important

item to the agriculturist, especially to i those whose land is situated a long distance from a railway, where the free use of artificials is made impraciticable, in which oaso the continuance of agriculturo depends upon tbo exist once of soino means of reclaiming the nitrogen out of tli3 atmosphere for the uso of plants. If there is no such means of reclaiming this fro© nitrogen, j and the land is cropped continually | with non-leguminous crop, it is evident . that the store of nitrogen in tho soil will be used up. and vegetation will ; eventually, ancf in highly cultivated lands, speedily die of nitrogen starvation. If, on *ho other hand, there is Koine means of reclaiming such lost I nitrogen, there is no need of nitrogen starvation, sinco there is an absolutely unlimited store of this element in the form of free nitrogen in the air. It is claimed that all leguminous plants have the power of fixing this free nitrogen, therefore to grow thorn the fanner not only obtains valuable food for stork, but at the same time enriche? bis land by so doing. j * \ HINTS TO CARDENERS. Seed-saving is an interesting feature of gardening, and one which is not carried on nearly so extensively as it oucht to be, especially in view of tho shortage and increased cost of imported seeds, and the fact that locally-grown seeds (of the same varieties) are invariably superior when they have been handled >roperly. Tomato seed is saved from horoughly ripe fruit by mashing the ntire tomato to a pulp. This pulp is illowed to stand for 24 hours in warm • oather, and a little longer in cool wea-| ihor; then it is f>tirred very vigorously, >o as to separate the seed from tho' )iilp. Then a quantity of water is' dded. Most of the seed will settle to j he bottom, and a large portion of the . efuse can be poured off by gently tip- i ting the receptacle; thus water is added I l.\vo or three times, and poured off. The ! .seed will be found clean and in excellent I condition in the bottom, with the ex-' ception of a lew hard chunks or cores, > which may be quickly picked out by I hand. The seed is easily dried by putting it into a cloth bag and squeezing , out considerable water. Then it may be \ spread on newspapers in the air to dry , thoroughly. When it is about dry it j may bo rubbed gently through the j hands a few times so that the seeds will bo flocculent instead of adhesive. This \ system is practised at homo and com-: mercially, but, of course, on a much j larger scalo where the seed is saved in ( quantities. , Egg plant seed is saved on- the same ( principle as tomato seed. Pepper seed , is removed from the peppers by cutting , around the top of the pepper, and then , pulling out the seed crown by taking, ) hold of tho stem. From this the seed , may be quickly scraped .off. The seed from cucumbers, melons, squashes, and pumpkins is removed by cutting the fruit in half. Place the material in a dish to stand for a day or two so that the seed-bearing tissues will more easily let loose the seed when it is ' rubbed through the hands. Then water 1 can be added, and poured off just as I with the tomato seed. I