PROPER GRASS MIXTURES

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 220, 13 April 1933, Page 2

PROPER GRASS MIXTURES

It would be difficult to over estimate the importance to the farmer of a good selection and proper mixture of gras seeds; seeds for the various purpose of cultivation, for hay, for green feed, for permanent pasture or for an alternate crop. But how did he fare at the hands of the English seedsmen? asks an overseas writer. This is what Faunce-de-Lanne says: “I had five acres of very valuable land that I wished to sow with permanent grass for seed; the laud was not only very good, but very highly manured and absolutely clean, having been a hop garden. I divided this field into three parts, one to be sown with cocksfoot, the second with meadow fescue and the third with rough meadow grass. I ordered with special care the three kinds of seed from one of the great seed merchants, and look forward next year to a good crop of seed, not suspecting that when the seed was especially rdered of a particular kind from a firm of repute, it would be anything but good. But after a week’s growth, although I was satisfied that the cocksfoot was true, my suspicions were aroused about the others, and I sent some of the seed that was-' left to be examined by the Consulting Botanist of the Royal Agricultural Society. To my great amazement I was told that the meadow fescue was all rye grass and the rough meadow grass (Poa trivalis) all smooth meadow grass (Kentucky blue grass, or Poa pratensis). There was nothing left for it but in the best posible way to destroy all the grass and resow it’s This wiiter concludes; “I am firmly convinced that in deciding never to sow for permanent grass any but the purest seed obtainable for the best permanent gl-asses, I have taken an important step in the right direction.