AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7221, 22 April 1884, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Intebcolonial. The weather during the past week has been the best for harvest operations that we have had for a considerable time past, and but very little grain is now out. The crops along the foot of the western range —the latest in Canterbury this year—have all been cut and the bulk of them stacked. Threshing is not proceeding so briskly as usual at this time of the year, as most farmers have wisely decided to give their wheat a good time in the stack in order to improve its condition. The agricultural returns for the Eangitikei, Oroua, and Manawatu districts in the North Island are as follows Number of holdings, 1116; land broken up, but not under crop, 4222; in wheat, 8622 acres, estimated yield 156,123 bushels; in oats for hay, 547 acres; in oats for grain, 4172 acres, yield 120,394 bushels; in barley, 661 acres, yield 22,336 bushels ; in sown grasses —for hay, 1587 acres, yield 2233 tons ;in •grasses, after being broken up, 58,240 acres ; grass sown lands pot previously broken up, 200,646 ; in potatoes, 305 acres yield, 2131 tons; maize or sorghum, 10 acres ; peas or beans, 24 acres ; turnips or rape, 4082 acres; root crops, 15 acres; garden or orchard, 605 acres; tobacco, 15 acres, any other crop, 89 acres.

The threshing machines all over the Waikato are now kept constantly at work, and so far the jield has in nearly all cases exceeded the estimate, in some places by fully ten bushels to the acre, while the samples are generally first-class. Indeed it is a recognised fact all over the district that fair and remunerative prices are the only conditions needed to establish wheatgrowing in the Waikato upon a large and ■systematic scale. Unusually early frosts in Victoria have resulted in very serious damage to garden crops, and in some districts the weather is now so dry that the ground has baked to such an extent as to prevent ploughing been proceeded with. We have received from the Secretary for Agriculture a table showing the results of experiments on six varieties of wheat grown at the Government Experimental Farm, DooMe, by Mr Herdman, the manager. They were sown from May 2 to May 15, 1883, and reaped from Dec. 16 to Jan. 6, 1884, the earliest sown—Mole’s white—being the latest to ripen. They were all sown on the same kind of soil —“yellow chocolate.” The rainfall during the time of maturation was 17£ to 18 inches. Purple Straw, one bushel of seed per acre, yielded 27 bushels per acre, and* weighed 681 b per bushel. Port Macdonald, 1 bushel yielded 26 bushels, weight 67|lb. White Lammas, 1 bushel yielded 22 bushels, weight 661 b. Champlain Hybrid, f bushel yielded 46 bushels, weight 66Jib. Mole’s Eed, f bushel yielded 14 bushels, weight 651 b. Mole’s White, J bushel yielded 12 bushels, weight 64£lb. It will thus be seen what a high position the new variety, Champlain Hybrid, occupies in productiveness, while its weight is little inferior to the best, justifying the esteem in which it is already held, and the great demand for it that has already arisen, independent of its alleged blight resisting'powers. In order that success may attend the placing of Australian hops on the London market (says the Leader) it is necessary that the requirements of buyers there be studied. It matters not at present whether their prejudices are well or ill-founded, but the fact of a fully ripe yellow hop being preferred in London to the rather greenish yellow hop for which our brewers show a preference ought to be remembered when mating selections for shipment. It is not improbable that the English liking for a fully ripe hop is an outcome of the local conditions of climate—coolness and humidity being too often the predominant features. The fine summer weather enjoyed here throughout the hopping is unknown in England at the corresponding season.