SILVER BEET.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVIII, Issue 88, 16 April 1914, Page 6

SILVER BEET.

Mr T. E. L. Roberts, of Scargill, Canterbury, writes:—Having read at considerable length of the virtues of silver beet as a forage crop, and also having the benefit of the Belfast plots to exemplify its claims as such, I decided this season to give it a trial at Scargill. I did not, as usual, wi^th a

new, crop, select the best land avail-

able and grow it there, but picked on a piece of fair average land so that the trial might serve as a practical test of its claims against rape, for instance. The land was ploughed out of its old lea in July and brokten with I the disc harrows. It was then left to the weather for about two months and again disced up and again left till October 20, when it was worked tip' for the sowing. The land was clean (to all intents and purposes, and

in capital heart for a- good crop of! rape. ' j ■ The sowing too place on October.» 20, and lcwt of rape fertiliser was ! put in with it, that being the_ ordin- \ ary amount of manure used with our j "rape crops. The plants came through . fairly well and made fair growth, but ; iit never/at any time showed signs of , being tne crop one would , expect, J 1 after all one reads of its phenomenal j claims. I carried out the experiment , \ not to prove that it is a good crop on good land under the best of cir- ■ cumstances, but just tretyted it in tlie ■ ordinary farming fashion of "the most for the least." I did not hoe it, but let it go as ; the rape crop put in at the same time was leijt to do. The weeds eventually were too much for the beet, but the rape was in every sense a . success, ' having outstripped the weeds. I found on putting the lambs on that they did not touch (the beet, while there was anything else to eat. II am not setting this down/as a> proof that beet is not a good forage1 crop under ideal conditions,, but rather for the farmer with ordinary land who might be tempted to try it on a -large scale on the strength, of the Belfast results. To any such, I, v?ould say: Don't exceed a quarter of an acre for a stai*, and not even that if the hoe is not to be applied