BLACKBERRY PROBLEM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19864, 11 June 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

BLACKBERRY PROBLEM

WAR AGAINST THE PEST TOP-DRESSING ADVOCATED. The spread of blackberry is a serious menace in so many districts, that results of practical experiments arc always interesting reading. A correspondent writing in the Taranaki Daily News states:— “A temporary fence on the roadside will settle the berry if included in the farm area. Goats and sheep will settle the creek banks, and, as for stale country, a well top-dressed blackberry there would be like a chicken to a nigger. I have been experimenting with manure since 1911, and in 1917 I took a farm of 700 acres at Te Kuiti. Part of the land was limestone bluffs, partly infested with berry, and the fence lines were, for the most part, covered with fern and blackberry in places. Knowing the results of previous manuring, I cleared all fences far enough to save them being burned. Then I burned off and manured all fence lines, and blackberry patches with half-and-half highgrade super and lime. “I had fences free from fire risk, a I good sward of grass, and scarcely a : blackberry to be seen. I have yet to l find the fern or blackberry to thrive on land systematically manured and stocked with sheep, and from six goats per hundred sheep upward. Get your goats to work with the sheep, so they can be removed together. I don’t believe in the plough for anything but breaking in new country and for obtaining catch crops. I will undertake to more than double the carrying capacity of any neglected farm in any district on strictly commercial lines, by i manuring and liming, and at the same time, eradicate practically all noxious growths. Using a plough to renew even the very worst wecd-infestcd pasture would, in my opinion, be courting bankruptcy.” Menace to Raspberries. The possibility that the use of imported parasites to destroy blackberry may result in the destruction of the raspberry in New Zealand was mentioned at the annual conference of Auckland fruitgrowers. A remit from the Canterbury Association recommended the Dominion conference to ask the Government not to allow the use of raspberry pests in fighting the blackberry. Mr G. A. Green said Dr. Tilyard, of the Cawthron Institute, had informed him that it was possible the natural enemies of the blackberry which were being experimented with at the institute would also destroy raspberries. If the use of the parasites referred to was objected to in the interests of the raspberry the destruction of blackberry would be prevented. Mr C. Ballantyne said the blackberry was such a serious pest in New Zealand that every patriotic raspberry grower would consent to raspberries being destroyed in order tc rid the country of blackberries. Mr Green added that Dr. Tilyard had said the parasites would not be released until thorough tests had been made. If they proved entirely successful the question of compensation for the destruction of raspberries would be one for the Government to consider. The matter was left in the hands of the delegates to the Dominion conference. WORKING HORSES DISEASES OF THE BONES. In street horses affections of the bones of the legs are much more common than in farm horses. It has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the hard nature of the road and strenuous work are alone responsible for the lesions in the bones in the former case. | From the known requirements of the animal, one would expect that the food should contain lime and phosphoric acid in about equal amounts. But the street horse is usually fed on foodstuffs with a large excess of the latter. Oats, the best balanced of all the grains, has about six times as much phosphoric acid as lime. Bran has over thirty times as much. Further, the street horse is often kept on the same ration for long periods. The continual excess of eeitain minerals, and deficiency of others, is bound eventually to affect the texture and the composition of the bones, rendering them softer, and more liable to injury. The farm horse, on the other hand, receives usually a greater variety of feeding stuffs. For the greater parr of the year, also, it gets a certain amount of grazing, and the minerals of the pasture supply what is liable to be deficient in stall feeding. It not infrequently happens that a street horse in bad condition, when put upon a farm, shows after a few months a marked improvement in its limbs. The improvement is probably due as much to the change in the diet as to the change in other conditions. —Live Stock Journal. EASIER PLOUGHING RESISTANCE LESSENED One outcome of a scries of tests carried owt at the Rothamsted Experiment Station, England, is the discovery of a relatively simple means by which the resistance of the soil to the plough can be reduced. It is based on the scientific fact that soil colloids are electronegative. That, in effect, means if a negatively charged plate is placed in the ground the water ’will pass out of the colloid and be deposited on the 1 plate. As every farmer knows a wet : plough share will cut through most soils much easier than n dry one. Working ■ on this principle experiments were con- , ducted with negatively charged shares, , when it was found the draft was mater- • ially reduced. The current was obtained 1 from a dynamo driven by the tractor.