Southern planter - The W&M Digital Archive

1908.]
oial fertilizer, at present prices, about twenty cents per
pound, it will be seen that there is about $28.00 worth ol
nitrogen in a seventy-five bushel crop of corn, and as it
is impossible to recover all the nitrogen supplied in the
form of fertilizer, it would take considerably more than
this amount to produce seventy-five bushels of corn. As
a matter of fact, it can be seen that it will be absolutely
necessary to resort to the use of legumes or some cheaper
source of nitrogen than that of commercial fertilizers
If corn production is to be profitably maintained on our
soils.
In an address I made at the Normal Farmers' Institute
of Pennsylvania, at Clearfield, in May, 1906, I took the
stand that where a farmer whose interest is in grain or
cotton, farms in a short rotation and brings in legume
crops frequently on his land and feeds them, and saves
the manure, he can keep his soil improving and never
buy an ounce of nitrogen in any form. Some considered
the statement rather broad, but every year the experiments
at the Stations continue to show that on the corn
crop especially it never pays to buy a complete fertilizer,
and it is getting more and more evident that the same
is true of the wheat crop. The men on the eastern shore
of Maryland who have brought their lands up to the
average of forty bushels of wheat per acre are the ones
who years ago abandoned the purchase of nitrogen altogether
and are using only acid phosphate and potash.
Another interesting item in this Indiana bulletin is the
statement in regard to the relative value of floats or pul-
verized raw rock and the dissolved rock or acid phosphate.
In 1906 an application of 1,000 pounds of the raw
phosphate rock increased the corn crop twenty bushels
per acre, while an application of 715 pounds of acid phos-
phate, costing the same amount of money, made an
increase of five bushels less than the raw rock. On
the wheat crop the first season the acid phosphate was
away ahead, but in two years thereafter the rock was
ahead, showing that it was slower in coming into avail-
ability. If used in connection with stable manure or with
a sod turned under for corn, I believe that the floats
will be the cheaper. The way that soil holds on to phos-
phoric acid was well shown by an application three years
before the corn crop, nothing having been applied in the
meantime. The check plot made eighteen bushels per
acre; the plot where acid phosphate had been applied
three years before made thirty-three bushels per acre, and
where rock floats had been applied three years before the
crop was thirty-eight bushels per acre. At the Rothamsted
Station in England, where 1,150 pounds of commer-
cial fertilizer have been applied annually for fifty years,
the average crop of wheat grown continuously on the
land has been thirty-seven bushels per acre, and has been
as high as forty-five bushels, while on another piece,
where fourteen tons of stable manure have been applied
every year for fifty years and wheat grown continuously,
the average crop has been thirty-six bushels per acre
and the highest forty-two bushels. This would seem to
Indicate that fertilizers will maintain the productivity of
the land, leaving profit out of view.
The bulletin recommends for the Southern Indiana soils
1. "The feeding of as much of the produce grown on the
THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.
land as possible and the return of the manure to the
soil. 2. The practice of a systematic rotation of crops
containing one or more of the legume crops in the series.
.3 The liberal use of clover, cow peas or other legume
crops is considered essential in order to keep up the nitro-
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First Prize Dutch Belted Bull, Virginia State Fair, 1907.
Owned by Mr. G. H. Dodge, Wilkinsonville, Mass.
gen supply and keep the soil in good mechanical condition.
The readers of this Journal will bear me out in saying
that these are the very points I have been hammering
at for many years. It all comes back to the fact that
humus-making material is essential to the maintenance
of the productivity of the soil, and when we can combine
the nitrogen fixation with the humus-making we have
reached the point where we can dispense with the nitrogen
of the fertilizer manufacturer. I believe that it will
be found in the long run that the use of phosphate rock
finely pulverized will be found more profitable than the
use of acid phosphate with the danger of depriving
the soil of lime carbonate through its use, and the consequent
souring of the soil. In a short rotation, where
legume crops are frequently grown, the manure from
feeding them and all the roughage and some of the grain
raised carefully saved, and applied as fast as made, the
soil will rapidly increase in humus and, with a soil
abounding in humus, the pulverized floats can be profit-
ably used, and will furnish phosphoric acid in greater sup-
ply for the same money than acid phosphate will and,
having the phosphorus in the soil, it will stay there till
some crop calls for it. Hence, in the permanent improvement
of the soil the floats will be a profitable investment.
But floats applied to land from which the humus has been
worn out will be very slow in making any returns, and
until there is a considerable improvement in the humus
content of the soil it will be better to use the acid phos-
phate, and the place where this and potash will pay best
in the improvement of the soil is on the pea crop that
will give you forage and humus-making material. Feed
the legumes liberally with the mineral plant foods and
you can depend on their doing the rest.
W. F. MASSEY.