DITIfflOX OF CEREALS 783 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



Few farmers of the region are interested in barley, which does not seem to do well 

 around here. When the fact is taken into consideration that a large proportion of the 

 soil is light, it must be acknowledged that barley is not the most suitable cereal to 

 grow. It should, however, receive more consideration for two main reasons: because 

 it can be sown much later than oats without ill effects on its yield, and also because 

 it is probably much better than oats as a nurse crop for clover and grass seed. The 

 first reason is a very good one as, with our very short season and scarcity of help, a 

 farmer is greatly handicapped when the sirring is late and wet. It would be much 

 better, then, to sow a barley like Success, which matured at the Station in an average 

 of 79-5 days, than an oat like Banner, which took exactly 20 days longer to ripen. 

 The second question is a most important one, especially in this district where most, of 

 the land is left in hay and pasture for periods of from four to ten years. If a cereal 

 is found with which clover and grass seed will grow better and yield more hay and 

 pasture, it will be of great benefit to the farmers. My impression is that barley will 

 be much better than oats in this respect. 



No tables are given for barley, because they would not furnish reliable informa- 

 tion, as there was not a normal crop since 1911. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



EXPERIMEXTS WITH OATS. 



Though coming under the Division of Field Husbandry, experiments which are 

 being made with different rates of seeding may be mentioned here. Different quan- 

 tities of grass and clover seed are being sown in the plots used for above experiment 

 to see if it pays to be liberal with the seed, and also to find out with what quantity 

 of oats as a nurse crop the best yield of hay can be had. 



BARLEY AS A NURSE CROP. 



In 1912, all test plots of cereals were sown to an ordinary clover and timothy 

 mixture. The plots, in 1913, gave an average per acre of 4,759 pounds of hay where 

 the barley had been used as a nurse crop, and only 3,635 pounds where oats were 

 sown. This is a difference of 24 per cent, and it shows the importance of barley 

 for this purpose in a district where, quite often, four or five consecutive crops 

 of hay and two or three years of pasture are taken before the land is ploughed. 



PEAS. THEIR HIGH PROTEIN CONTENT. 



Peas are very little grown in' the district, though for stock feeding they would 

 be ver;s' advantageous on account of the high protein content, ^^'ith the price 

 of mill by-products constantly soaring higher, it will soon be advisable to grow at 

 least a portion of the concentrates to be fed to live- stock. And as most of the 

 roughages have too large a proportion of carbohydrates and fat, it behooves the 

 wideawake farmer to grow crops of grain with a good percentage of protein. It 

 is interesting to see the total digestible protein per acre on all plots of cerea.ls 

 grown at this station since 1911: Peas, 359 pounds; oats, 223 pounds; two-row barley, 

 108 pounds; six-row barley, 89 pounds; wheat. 84 pounds. Next to oats, I should 

 consider peas to be the cereal which should receive the most attention here. 



It may be added that the pea, as a nitrogen gatherer from the air, would come 

 in very well in rotations where it is impossible to have a large enough proportion 

 of land under hoed croi)s. 



l(3_51i Cap Eouge. 



