AGRICULTURE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 174, 19 January 1860, Page 4

AGRICULTURE.

How to Farm One Hundred Acres. [From the Sydney Era.']

The following essay on the best method of cultivating a hundred acres of land was read at a meeting of the Villiers and ITeytesbury Agricultural Association, and appeared in a late number of a Victoria contemporary: — “Asregards the best method of cultivating one hundred acreß of land,-I think the following would be found loth. economical and profitable. I shall suppose the land to have been .cultivated in the style common to this district, for at least eight or ten years :• — “ 2'he first thing would be to have the land divided, if not already done, into, say Six paddocks of the following dimentions, viz -four of twenty acres each, and two ten acre paddocks, selecting the most inferior and foul; sow forty acres of wheat on the best lots, ten acre paddocks with oats, and the ten acres with barley. and potatoes. One team of fair farm horses ought to be sufficient to work one hundred acres of land; all the wheat land ought to be sown by the Ist June, as also the barley, say four acres for horse feed and green stuff. Sow oats and plough potatoe land by Ist July. After which the land: intended for bare fallow may be commenced to be ploughed and harrowed about the end of the month of July. The

potatoe land, if dry, may be put into ridges; about twenty-seven inches'apart. A pair of horses ought to ridge and furrow about three acres a day; if the . land be very foul, it may be re-ridged,‘ and if dry, harrowed down in about three weeks time; the fallowed land that is now j)lowed ought to be well harrowed down, and more of the land ploughed. Potatoes had better be planted about the beginning of October, still plant them in ridges. As soon as the land for fallow has been once ploughed and bai'rowed, that which was first ploughed may be laid up in ridges, about the 'ame width apart as for potatoes, so as to expose roots of weeds to the sun. The land can then be either harrowed down, or the ridges cast, and. then harrowed; if the land breaks up in lumps; it ought be well rolled, and can hardly be turned too often. Where sorrel abounds, I have found this plan, superior to horse-hoeing, and not much difle-; rence in the expence, with this advantage,' that the laud is turned up to a much greater depth than with a horse-hoe. The barley land ought to be ploughed as soon as the grain is off, and would do for the potatoe land, by the application of some manure, the second year. All grain given to plough horses ought to "well boiled and mixed with the chaff; no one who has tried feeding horses on chaff would give them loose hay. Thehorses ought to finish their work at one yoking. Stubbles to be burnt. .The headlands had better be cut for hay, and then, ploughed, so as to prevent fire spreading too much in stubble burning, and as a safeguard against accidental fires. “The second year, so all fallowed landwith wheat, preserving a strip all round for potatoes, as a preventative to fire. Onb twenty acre paddock, with oats, fallowing thirty acres, and the other ten acres of barley and potatoes. “ Fourth year, thirty acres fallow with wheat, the best twenty acres of the second year’s fallow also so with vTieat, ten acres of oats, ten acres of barley and potatoes, and thirty acres of land fallowed the first year, to be again fallowed ready for next season, and the same system carried out year after year for ten or thirty years, with benefit both to land and farmer.

“ The advantage of the foregoing system is chat one team and one man can cultivate the hundred acres, and after the first year the quantity and quality of the grain is much improved. My own experience of a bare fallow was an increase of nearly four to one on land that had been cropped for about, twenty years, and the quantity of oats to the acre after the fallow was sixty bushels. “Louden, in his *Encyclopedia of AgrL culture,’ 3rd edition, published in 1835, thus describes a bare fallow, as it ought to be‘ln Scotland and in the best cultivated -districts, a summer fallow is a portion of land begun to be cultivated after the crop is moved in autumn, and is frequently; ak need re* quires, ploughed, harrowed, - and otherwise cominuted, and freed from stones, weeds, inequalities, &c., till the autumnal seed time of the following year: it is thus for twelve months in a state of constant tillage and movement. The result is that the land is tho? roughly freed from roots of weeds, which are thus made to germinate, and are then destroyed, and from eggs of isnects which are thus hatched, but being without plants to nourish them intheirlarva state, speedily die; The laud is also thoroughly pulverised, and the .top, bottom, and middle, mixed together. Stones picked out, inequalities unfavourable to surface drainage removed or lessened, and various other useful objects attained. Such a fallow can no more be cempared with what usually passes under that name, than the plough of -Virgil with that of £mall.’ “In working a farm on the foregoing sys* tern, it would be advisable to have the fallowed land and that cropped so arranged that all the cropped lands should not be either all near or far away from the farm yard, for the advantage of carting in the grain, the horses going to their work, #c. The premises ought to be near the centre of«the land, and so situated as to overlook as much as possible, if not the : whole of' the paddocks. The stock-yard ought to be ’well fenced, eitherwith post- rail fence or with, palings, and on a slight elevation; it would be an 'advantage to have it sown with white clover, and kept fed down until the stacks are- up, when it would form a good break in case of fire. “In picking wheat for seed, I use 4 lb. of blue stone to the first 8 bushels, covering the wheat about two inches with fflie lye, and toevery pickling of 8 bushels add 1 lb. of blue stone, allowing the grain to remain in about seven hours. Oats and barley ought ! also. ta be pickled, using about one-half the quantity of blue stone, and allowing the pickle to remain on the grain three or four hours. AH gram should he pickled the day before sowing. “In ploughs I prefer Eansomo and Sim’s YEL plough, as being of light draught, and of turning the furrow in a superior mannei? to most ploughs. “ Ths seed drill is a fine implement, but [expensive, and could he used with advantage, I particularly on light soils. | - “ Tasmania.”