25 



THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOTS AND FIELDS. 



1914 like 1913 was characterised by a long dry summer, but it 

 was much more sunny, indeed over the whole season, April to Sep- 

 tember inclusive, there were 1,211 hours of sunshine against only 

 899 in 1913. The last four months of 1913 had been drier than 

 usual so that the work was well forward : January also was relatively 

 dry and favourable for work in the fields, while the frosts and the 

 dry weather of 1 )ecember helped materially in getting the soil into 

 good condition. The winter wheat started well, the general mildness 

 of the winter being favourable to growth. February and March 

 were very wet, 7'55 inches of rain falling against an average of 

 373 so that the work on the land was brought to a standstill. 

 Then followed a spell of dry sunny clays with a cold N.E. wind, 

 which greatly checked winter corn and grass and was not very 

 favourable for the getting of a tilth, in consequence the barley came 

 up somewhat unevenly. May was a bad month for growth : it was 

 dry, cold with N.E. and NAY. winds and there were several frosts. 

 Warmer weather set in in June and a good shower of rain helped 

 both mangolds and potatoes considerably, but it came too late to 

 save the hay, which was very short. The drought continued so 

 long that Brussels sprouts had to be watered in. 



Harvest weather was good, and ploughing for winter crops 

 was kept going notwithstanding the persistence of the drought. 

 The winter corn had ripened well but the barley was late and its 

 uneven ripening caused the harvest to be prolonged. 



Mangolds were seriously affected by the dry summer, the yield 

 on Harnfield being brought down to almost exactly one half the 

 average. Hay also was badly affected and the only plots in the 

 Park approaching normal yields were those receiving nitrate of 

 soda or sulphate of ammonia. Clover hay grown in the Rotation 

 experiment on Agdell Field also gave low yields. The Broadbalk 

 wheat was again poor, the yields being almost identical with those 

 obtained in 1913, but for this the season is only partly responsible. 

 Continuous wheat growing allows very few opportunities of 

 cleaning the land, and weeds have obtained so strong a hold on this 

 field that hoeing and hand-weeding are insufficient to keep them 

 down, and indeed the processes finally injure the crops more than 

 the weeds. The committee therefore decided to fallow the west or 

 top half of the field in 1914, and the east or bottom half in 1915. 

 Only once before since the experiment began in 1843 has there 

 been a fallow, and that was in 1903-4 and 1904-5, when however, 

 the operation was carried out by dividing each plot into a north and 

 south half and fallowing one in 1903-4 and the other in 1904-5. 

 The method did not prove very successful by reason of the 

 narrowness of the strips. 



On the ordinary farm land Long Hoos Field yielded 39 bushels 

 of wheat per acre, but Great Knott Field, which had been badly 

 attacked by birds, only yielded 24 bushels per acre. 



The Hoos Field barley, grown continuously on the same land, 

 was somewhat below the average and very considerably below the 

 extraordinarily high yields of 1913 which followed on the fallow of 

 1912. Higher yields were obtained in the adjoining Little Hoos 

 Field where barley is grown in rotation; perhaps the most interesting 



