EFFECTS OF POTASH.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18617, 12 July 1930, Page 13

EFFECTS OF POTASH.

Potash salts have a decided action upon the soil nitrogen. These alkiline solutions have great power to dissolve organic matters and render unavailable nitrogen available. This tendency of potash to promote rank growth is well illustrated wherever the land has been recently cleared of wood and the logs burned. The rankness of growth which follows is probably due not only to the available potash returned to the soil but also to the abundant supply of nitrogenous food made available by the action of the alkali upon the soil humus, and to the fact that alkali has a tendency to retain moisture. As the presence of an alkali favours the growth of the fungus which produces potato scab, ashes should be used with care on land where a crop of potatoes is to be grown. A bushel cf good home-burned unleached hardwood ashes weights about 481 b, and on the average contains about 41b of potash, lilb of phosphoric acid, and 181 b of lime. Wet ashes are not much more compact than dry. While a bushel of wet ashes weighs considerably more than a bushel of dry ashes, the difference is chiefly due to the w r ater. A bushel of wet or leached ashes contains about 501 b of dry matter, or practically the same as a bushel of dry ashes.

FLAX INDUSTRY. Reference to investigations being carried out in regard to phormium tenax, was made by the chairman at a recent meeting of the Research Council. “Breeding and secetion work,” he said, “are continuing under Dr Yeates, at Massey College, where several promising strains are meriting attention. At the same time ‘yellow-leaf’ disease research is being actively pushed forward. This trouble—possibly being of the virus type—is proving exceedingly difficult of solution. Chemical work is under way, and several methods of softening and bleaching fibre are being actively subjected to investigation.”