12 
A Paying Crop for the West: 
A CHAT WITH WESTERN FARMERS. 
By HENRY A. TARDENT, 
Manager Westbrook Experimental Farm. 
A few years ago it was generally admitted that agriculture could be 
carried on succéssfully only on the coast. The West was the Never-Never 
country—a barren desert, hardly fit to rear sheep on. ‘Those prejudices were 
not seldom shared by some farmers of the West themselves, who wrongly 
tried to grow in that country crops not adapted either tu the soil or to the _ 
climate. Maize, for instance, is being planted year after year in thousands of 
acres, although it is therea most unreliable crop. It cannot be denied that 
here and there fair crops of excellent corn have been gathered, but taken on 
an average it does not pay. It requires from 15 to 20 inches of rain annually 
to grow a crop of corn to perfection. That amount of rain is never obtained 
within the three or four months wanted to bring a crop of corn to maturity. 
Cultivators of maize seldom get even the few showers which are absolutely 
necessary at flowering time for the flowers to set. Hence too many cobs badly 
shaped and imperfectly filled. 
Similar drawbacks exist for many other crops. 
What then is to be grown in the West ? 
We may produce a good many crops which pay very well indeed and grow 
there much better than on the coast land; amongst others, wheat and grapes. 
and a great variety of fruit-trees. But these may be some day spoken of more 
_in detail in subsequent numbers. To-day the writer would jike to draw atten- 
tion to the very crop wanted in order to enable farmers to become successful 
_ farmers. It is not difficult to grow. It can be planted from September to 
_ December inclusive, and can be gathered as required from Christmas to Sep- 
tember, during eight months. It is a most wholesome and acceptable food for 
man, for pigs, for poultry, for horses, and for cattle. It gives on an average 
from 6 to 8 tons of product per acre, worth for any of the above uses at least - 
£5 per ton, which means a return of from £30 to £50 per acre. 
. From official statistics it would appear that the average crop of sweet 
_ potatoes is, west of the Nange, 1% tons per acre. The figures must no doubt 
be accepted as correct, but experience shows that this weight can be enormously 
increased by the exercise of a little science and a great deal of common sense. At 
Roma, a typical Western district some 320 miles west from Brisbane, the writer 
has grown, year after year, rows upon rows of sweet potatoes, giving on an 
_ average half-a-stone in weight per plant. With some 8,000 plants to the acre, 
this means 25 tons per acre. Of course on a large scale it never comes to that, 
there being always misses and some weaker plants. But the writer is well 
assured of having reached 15 and 16 tons, and has often filled many bags with 
_ tubers varying between 5 and 15 1b. each. At the 1894 show he exhibited one 
ee weighing 29 Ib., which is the record for the West, if not for the whole 
colony. 
‘This has, however, not been the general experience of Western farmers, for 
the reason that they adopted unskilled methods of cultivation. 
‘The only thing required in order to grow sweet potatoes to perfection in 
the West is a hotbed. 
Farmers, of course, know that sweet potatoes are not planted like the 
English potatoes, for which whole tubers or simply eyes are put in the ground, 
For sweet potatoes it is the shoots from the tubers which have to be cut off 
