PROPER GRASS MIXTURES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 18 (Supplement)

PROPER GRASS MIXTURES

It would bo difficult to over estimate the importance to the farmer of a good selection and proper mixture of grass seeds; seeds for the various purposes of cultivation, for bay, lor green feed, for permanent pasture or for an alternate crop. But how did he fare at the hands of the English seedsmen? asks an overseas writer. This is what i'auncc-de-Laune says: —“1 had live acres of very valuable land that I wished to sow with permanent grass for seed; the land was not only very good, but very highly manured and absolutely dean, having been a hop garden. I divided this field into three parts one to be sown with cocksfoot, the second with meadow fescue ami the third with rough meadow grass. J ordered with special care the three kinds of seed from one of the great seed merchants, and looked forward next year to a good crop of seed, not suspecting that when the seed was especially ordered of a particular kind from a firm of : jute, it would bo anything but good. But after a week’s growth, although I was satisfied that the cocksfoot was true, my suspicions were aroused about the others, and I sent some of the seed that was left to be examined by Hie Consulting Botanist of the Boyal Agricultural Society. To my great amazement I was told that the meadow fescue was all rye grass and the rough meadow grass (Poa trivalis) all smooth meadow grass (Kentucky blue grass, or Poa pratensis). There was nothing left for it but in the best possible way to destroy all the grass and resow it.” This writer concludes. “I am firmly convinced that in deciding never to sow for permanent grass any but th" purest seed obtainable for the best permanent grasses. I have taken an important step in the right direction.”