THe JOURNAL 



OF 



LIBRARY 



NEW YORK 



BOTANICAL 



QAKPETS. 



Tfie ©epartmenf of Mgriculture 



VICTORIA. 



Vol. VIII. Part 3. 



10th March, 1910. 



RESULTS OF CONTINUOUS WHEAT EXPERIMENTS. 



F. E. Lee, Agricultural Superintendent. 



The policy, initiated five years ago, of conducting wheat experiments 

 upon different sections of the same plot of ground, is just now beginning 

 to bear fruit. Among progressive wheat-growers, the usual practice is to 

 grow one or two crops of wheat, followed by a crop of oats, then a year 

 or so in grass before the land is fallowed prior to resowing with wheat. 

 This practice is an admirable one w'hen the holding is sufficiently large 

 to permit new land to be broken up each year without diminution of the 

 area under wheat; but it is not possible upon a small farm. One of the 

 objectives of the present wheat experiments is to test the possibility of 

 more intense cropping of the same land, without diminishing its producing 

 power or rendering it foul with wild oats and weeds. 



The returns referred to in this respect are from land which has 

 borne three wheat crops in five years. The figures are eloquent as demon- 

 strations of two facts : — 



{a) That the yield of suitable varieties of wheat under a system 

 of thorough .soil preparation and manuring, and aided bv 

 the use of only prime graded seed, can be maintained over 

 a longer term of years, without fouling the land, than has 

 hitherto been considered possible. 

 {b) That the future improvement of the State average yield of wheat 

 is likely to be more dependent upon soil treatment than 

 manures. 

 The writer, ha^■ing consistently opposed the burning of stubble for several 

 years past, was confronted with the problem of satisfactorily dealing with 

 this problem upon the experimental plots. A method which has been 

 found to give good results is the rolling of the stubble and cross discing 

 to cut it into small pieces which are worked into .the soil without serious 

 difficulty. Another method having many advantages, is a thorough scari 

 fying of the stubble prior to fallowing. This latter method is advocated 

 by Professor Campbell, the prophet of " Dry Fnrming," as an effective 

 means of restoring capillaritv between the subsoil and cultivated portion. 

 1915. E 



