Swede Turnips and Oats on the Logan and Albert

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2015, 10 January 1887, Page 3

Swede Turnips and Oats on the Logan and Albert

At the farm of Mr Isaac Shaw, Luscombe, Albert Hirer, Queensland, was the finest crop of swede turnips we have yet seen in the colony ; and growing alongside was equally, in its way, as fine a crop of oaten hay. So a note was made of the circumstance fur the benefit of farmers to show that even in a season of drought it is possible on these Southern rivers to grow abundance of the best of cattle food. The area of the ground under pwedes was about four acres. The soil was s black clay of good depth, and on the river bank, but many feet above any posable high flood mark. Mr Sbsw is an old country turnip grower, and, bringing with him his Yorkshire notions that the soil for turnips should be thoroughly worked, he ploughed, cross ploughed, reploughed, and ploughed again, and and then in March sowed the seed in drills. The young plants were kept free from weeds, and though they have hardly bad a shower of rain of any csnsequeoce on them, they are a grand crop. Individually they will average 101b, and there having been hardly any misses they are as thick on the ground as they can well be. The yield per acre 1 could not obtain, as they have not been weighed, but they have been, and still are, the main food of all the dairy and stud cattle on the farm during this present season of deficient grass. This success should stimulate others to follow suit, and so save their cattle from the usual slow starvation incident to the winter and spring months.

Adjoining the turnips was a field of oats, thick out of the ground, green in color, and an average height of sft. They were being cut for hay, and f ant confident would go three tons to the acre—not bad results for a season of drought. The peculiar quality of the soil had much to do with this success, as on the level scrub soils lower down the river banks is land under oats, but the crops are most miserable. Again, down the river si far as Ageston, where a three ton crop i* usually grown, this year it lias been a complete failure At Bannockburn (Mr A. Watt’ s plantation) i.< a knoll of almost similar characteristic* under cane which had bemi badly fro*t- d. Our counsel t > these Upper Albert planters would be to root out the cone and sow with lucerne, Johnson grass, oals, or turnips, wherever the land is ot this black clay nature, and so liable •■o catch the frost.