October, 1909.] 



309 



Edible Products. 



trade determined to go and investigate 

 the matter on the spot. On his arrival 

 at Sydney he made a long tour through 

 sheep stations, and when he returned he 

 wrote to the papers an account of his 

 tour and ended by saying : 



"One thing is. certain, that the Colonists 

 know nothing upon earth about wool.'' 

 As this subject of wool had been the 

 only thought day and night of thousands 

 of intelligent men for many years, this 

 saying rather startled the people gener- 

 ally and offended them. But one of the 

 leading squatters asked him to come and 

 see his flocks, which he did, and passed 

 some thousands of sheep through his 

 hands. The result was that the owner 



said " I begin to think Mr. is l ight 



and that we know nothing on earth 

 about wool." And certain it is that from 

 that time a new era was introduced, and 

 wool was brought to a degree of perfec- 

 tion through the new principles laid 

 down by this gentleman, that nobody 

 had thought of before. 



This is exactly what was said about 

 tea planting about twenty years ago by 

 a then very prominent agriculturist. 

 " The whole body of thoseemployed in the 

 cultivation of tea know nothing on earth 

 about vegetation or the first principles 

 of agriculture." Whether there is much 

 alteration, even now, after the advent of 

 the agricultural experts into our midst, 

 is very much a matter of opinion, If a 

 youngster newly out to tea is asked why 

 a garden is hoed so often during a season, 

 his answer will probably be that it is to 

 keep the garden clear of weeds. He 

 .knows little more about the matter, and 

 this is not to be wondered at, as at least 

 seventy per cent, of the people engaged 

 in agricultural pursuits at home would 

 return you the same answer. Compared 

 with all the other arts and sciences, 

 agriculture is the slowest in advancing. 

 It was asserted by an agricultural writer 

 last year that a tea planter had very 

 hazy ideas as to why light hoeing pro- 

 duced leaf. He hoed because other people 

 hoed, and he found if he did not hoe he 

 did not get the same quantity of leaf. 

 He might have very safely gone further 

 by saying that it would puzzle experts 

 themselves (himself included) to give a 

 wholly satisfactory answer to the ques- 

 tion, why repeated light hoeing should 

 stimulate, again and again, the produc- 

 tion of leaf, and, within certain limits 

 the axiom stands good that, "the more 

 hoe the more leaf." This may be taken 

 as a rule of all leaf producers from the 

 homely cabbage upwards, the more cul- 

 tivation—other conditions being in uni- 

 sion — the larger the amount of vegeta- 

 ble matter in the shape of leaf is pro- 

 duced, if the plants' roots are not muti- 



lated in the process. Whether the 

 chemical action kept going on by the 

 hoe is thoroughly understood or not, the 

 great majority of planters believe in the 

 annual early cold-weather deep hoe. 



Every Planter the best Judge, 



But there are still a few who, rightly 

 or wrongly, do not believe in a deep hoe 

 at all. Every planter ought to be the 

 best judge and know his own garden 

 best, and there may be cases where a 

 deep hoe may be disastrous. If we may 

 take a hypothetical case (although there 

 are numbers to be found in every tea 

 district), a garden may never have had a 

 deep hoe and have a solid impermeable 

 hard pan existing just below the depth 

 of the usual light hoe. The tea roots 

 have not a great penetrating power 

 when they come into contact with such 

 a hard pan. This is perhaps as much due 

 to there being no inducement in the way 

 of available food as anything else. No 

 matter to what depth the original 

 jungle soil may be loose and friable, 

 when the jungle is cleared and the soil 

 regularly hoed it is bound with our heavy 

 rainfall to form a hard pan just below 

 the depth to which it is hoed. The 

 minute particles of the soil are being 

 continually worked downwards till 

 arrested by the harder soil beneath, 

 where, in combination with any lime 

 particles there may be in the soil, it 

 forms a cemented hard pan. If the 

 roots have not been able to penetrate 

 downwards before this hard pan forms, 

 they get stunted in their endeavours to 

 penetrate it, some of them running along 

 its surface, turning their points upwards 

 towards the cultivated surface and get- 

 ting the young tips continually cut 

 with the hoe. We have now an estab- 

 lished surface-rooting tea garden, with 

 a mass of fibrous root, underneath the 

 branches, one of the most undesirable 

 things in creation for a planter to have 

 under his charge. Such a garden wants 

 deep cultivation in order to give the 

 roots a chance of a longer range in which 

 to search for food, as well as to create a 

 larger supply of available food for the 

 plant. But if this is done the roots 

 are bound to get badly mutilated, 

 and the plants, being already in a 

 weakened state, will either be killed out- 

 right or receive such a shock as to render 

 it almost impossible for them to recover. 



Trenching. 

 It has been found extremely difficult 

 to alter the root action of any plant 

 when once it reaches the age of matur- 

 ity, and the tea r plant is no exception 

 to the rule. But in such a case as cited, 

 which is by no means so rare as may be 

 supposed, it has been found that the best 



