GRASS-SEEDING.

Waipa Post, Volume IV, Issue 186, 7 February 1913, Page 4

GRASS-SEEDING.

SOMETHING ABOUT CROPS. The grass-seed harvest is now in full swing, and reports from various quarters indicate that seed is generally of very good quality this season. During the course uf a conversation with a Palmerston North merchant, who has his finger on the pulse of the grass-seed trade throughout New Zealand, a contemporary's representative was informed that the Sandon rye crop would be much less this season than last. Last year the seed was very light and generally unsatisfactory ; so much so that many growers have not grown any this year. Another factor which deterred growers was the bad weather this season, which brought up a lot of rubbish with the grass. The rye that is being harvested in Sandon at present, however, is reported to be of excellent quality—on the whole probably the best the district has ever produced. Tt will probably run something like 30lb to 321 b to the bushel.

Some of the foremost Sandon growers have had trouble of late years in getting their seed threshed and as a resuit more than one farmer is reported to have imported small threshing nlants so as to be independent of outside aid. In one case the importer reckons his venture will save him a clear £2OO this season. Where he had previously been paying away about £250 for threshing, labour, etc., he estimates this season to get through for a shade ovet £4O. Another change in the harvesting operations at Sandon is the displacing ol the old system of carting the sheaves in the machine by a system of sledging. The result is a minimum of handling and a great decrease in the amount of seed shaken out and lost. As far as Sandon is concerned crested dogstail, which has previously been grown extensively, has been pretty much left alone this year, and there will be a big shortage in the district output. Most of the merchants, however, are still holding big stocks of this seed from last year. The cocksfoot coming in is reported to be of very good quality, and in spite of labour troubles, the southern cocksfoot crop will probably be a record one. According to the authority under review practically no

prairie grass is being handled in Palmerston this yenr and no tall fescue is bein;.; cut, :s there is no market for it. Meadow fescue is so cheap at Home at present that buyers will no! look at tall fescue, and Where thousands of sacks of the latter were handled last year, there will oniy be hundreds this seas >n..

While on the question of grassseed it is interesting to note the beginning and growth of the cocksfoot industry on Banks Peninsula which, by the way, a northern farmer holds, will be a steadily-decreasing trade henceforth, owing to the advance which dairying is making, and the labour difficulty.

Mr Geo. Armstrong is credited by a southern writer with being the first known person to haye introduced cocksfoot on the Peninsula. Somewhere about iB6O Mr Armstrong was running a boat to Wellington and purchased few bags of .cocksfoot here to try as a pasture grass. He sowed some of it at Grehan Valley and the balance in a paddock below Mount Vernon. Attracted by the seed, neighbours used to cut off the seed-heads with knives, rubbing the seed out when they got home. The success of the grass was quickly noted and its fame spread rapidly. - It is stated that the first to grow seed for sale was a Frenchman named Charles Lemmonier, who cultivated a tenacre patch in Grehan Valley. The price is reported te- have been about is 3d per lb. As time went on, however, more people grew the seed and the price came down, until, in 1870, its market value was Qd per lb. s There is no official record of the Peninsula cocksfoot crops until 1885, when 50,829 sacks were harvested, and no official price is given until ißqi, when sacks were harvested at from 4%d to 5%d per lb. The heaviest crop harvested was in 1906, when 87,942 sacks were got in from 3/4d to 6d per lb. The smallest crop harvested since 1885 was in 1911, when only 35,383 sacks were procured. On this occasion the drought forced farmers to turn their cattle into the paddocks.