STRIPPING OF GRASS SEED

Southland Times, Issue 23408, 15 January 1938, Page 15

STRIPPING OF GRASS SEED

HINTS FOR HARVESTING CROPS

Throughout a large part of the South Island harvesting of both hay and grain crops will be done during January. Grass-seed stripping will also be undertaken where ryegrass ana clover pastures are suitable for seed production. There is one aspect of grass-seed harvesting, which may be stressed. That is the advantage of saving ones own seed where further areas are to be laid down in grass, or old and weedinfested swards are to be resown. * Grass, like any other form of life, adapts itself it its environment, and it is a safe bet that seed grown on the farm will produce healthier plants than that secured from a distant district where conditions of soil and climate may be widely different. Cocksfoot, perenniel ryegrass, crested dogstail, the various clovers, and so on, can usually be stripped or cut and flailed on most farms where small paddocks or comers are saved for this purpose. The cost of saving these seeds is not great, and if they are sent to the seed merchant for cleaning and extraction of weed seeds prior to mixing and sowing, they will provide the most valuable mixture that can "be used.

Farm harvested seeds are best used as soon as possible. If kept in bags until the following spring their germination is always seriously impaired, whereas if sown in the autumn following harvesting the results are invariably good. Following each cut of lucerne at this season the stand should be thoroughly cultivated with a rigid tine cultivator. This keeps down the weeds, conserves the moisture in the subsoil and stimulates rapid growth from lucerne crowns which have become “bound” and cramped, but are broken up by the cultivation to form new crowns. Lucerne should not be top-dressed except with lime.