NOXIOUS WEEDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 245, 11 September 1930, Page 6

NOXIOUS WEEDS.

The experiments conducted on Campion’s Line to test the efficacy of sodium chlorate on gorse and blackberry will, if successful, and providing the cost is not excessive, nave far reaching results in those areas where noxous weeds flourish. In an outline of other experiments which he gave to a recent meeting of the Manawatu Rabbit Board, Mr Grant, the Government representative on the Board, spoke hopefully of achieving success in the destruction of gorse, the spray then having shown marked effect on this plant at Massey College. Sodium chlorate, it was added, had been used on ragwort which had been completely destroyed. The experiments conducted this week dealt only with gorse and blackberry, plants which are difficult and costly to remove once they have obtained a firm hold, and the opinion formed by the Departmental officials is that spraying would be more effective if carried out at certain periods of the year, October being the more suitable period in the Manawatu for gorse. The position was adequately summed up at the meeting referred to in the statement that there were many acres of noxious weeds in the Manawatu to-day which would cost their owners more to clear than the land was worth under the old system of grubbing, and if by the expenditure of a few pounds the country could be cleared by spraying, it would mean a lot for the district. On poorer lands pastures have been destroyed bj r noxious w r eeds whose eradication is so costly as to be beyond the means of the occupants,- and if it is possible ultimately to bring this land back to productivity by the spraying of sodium chlorate on the weeds and plants, without undue expense, the benefit to the country will be incalculable.