THE TURNIP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 180, 1 July 1937, Page 5

THE TURNIP.

WHAT IT CONTAINS. “Chemists may tell tis that loots contain about 90 i>er cent, water, but as the farmer said, it is ‘sweet water,’ and just as there are more tilings in heaven and earth than were ever dreamt of. so there- are probably more things in a turnip than the chemist has yet detected.” So said Mr J. Stewart in an address on home-grown feeding stud's in England.- , “Even grass, the super food, is 80 per cent, water, of which all doctors say we drink too little.” Mr Stewart has always considered that kale and rape prove really satisfactory substitutes for pasture. Ho believes that one means ot relieving the present stress is 10 concentrate on just as much ploughland as we can do well and grow full crops. Although valuation tables still seemed to indicate that it was more economical to sell cereals and buy maize, and even to ■sell beans and buy decorticated ground-nut cake, there watt more to it than starch equivalents.” The man who bought nothing he could produce for himself seldom went “broke.” . • Mixed crops; he declared, arc otten more productive and more economical than pure , Cl ops. lie spoke of a farm where 30cwt and often two tons per acre ot a mixluio ot

bean- and naif is regularly grown, seedin'* is three and a half bushels of beans and two and a half b..sbc’« of oats broadThe great advantage of such a tio.t is that it will stand up and can, thoretore, he liberally fertilised, and it ra,uires no more labour to speak of than a crop yielding half the quantity mentioned. IT farmer* could produce grass and supplementary forage crops where necessary tor eight months they would be. during that period, independent of feeding stuffs for the average sort of dairy cow. Ihts would on.y menu -pending on fertiliscrs-thc one cointnoditv I hat, was still relatively cheap.