Apply the fertilizers and work them in the soil about four inches deep
before the crop is planted. Plant the same variety of seed on all the
squares at the same time, and carefully cultivate through the entire
season, treating all exactly alike. Suppose that potatoes have been
used. During the growing season, carefully watch the different plats
and notice if any one or more seems more or less thrifty than others.
Notice which plat appears to mature first, which blooms first and keep
a record of all observations. At the end of the season, carefully dig
the crop on each square, gathering all the tubers large and small,
and weigh each lot. First weigh the crops on squares 2 and 9. This
will serve as a standard of comparison, as it will show the natural
condition of the soil. Record the weights in each lot and just for
illustration we may say that they run something like this: Average of
2 and 9, 80 pounds; No. 1, 380 pounds; No. 3, 250 pounds; No. 4, 360
pounds; No. 5, 350 pounds; No. 6, 300 pounds; No. 7, 220 pounds; No. 8,
400 pounds; No. 10, 120 pounds.
On the particular soil we are supposed to be testing, we can clearly
see that the land is benefited in some degree by every element used.
Calcium helps, and that means that it should be used on that soil
in addition to all of the others. This land plainly needs all four
elements and needs potassium especially.
What to Do.--After having gone through with Mr. Barnard’s experiments,
you will have a practical idea of what your soil is, and what it needs.
The only remaining questions then are those of preparing the soil, and
obtaining and applying the plant foods and the lime.
A cold, wet, clay soil needs to be made warmer and lighter, and a
light, sandy soil, being too dry, needs some moisture-retaining
substance. If conditions are favorable, it would be well at odd time
to put sand on the clay soil and clay on the sandy soil; but in most
cases this is too expensive, and therefore not practical. To redeem
poor lands then, you will have to depend almost entirely upon green
manure and lime. Barnyard manures are, of course, at all times, with
all soils, the best of all fertilizers, as they return to the soil by
the laws of nature, what has been taken from them, or what it should
have. Besides the plant foods, it furnishes additional organic matter
or humus, which makes the soil lighter and facilitates plant growth by
furnishing food to bacteria essential to plant life. The trouble about
barn-yard manure is its scarcity. Every farm needs more plant food and
humus than can be supplied with common manure.
In the fall, apply 500 pounds of lime per acre to the poor land to be
redeemed, break it and prepare it thoroughly, and seed it to rye. In
the spring when the rye heads out, turn it under and sow cow peas. When
the peas mature, scatter lime, 500 pounds to the acre, over them and
turn them under. The lime will prevent the green stuff from souring the
soil, will decompose it and fit it for plant food, and will prepare the
soil to accept any other foods that may be applied. Follow the peas
with wheat, or wheat and clover.
The land once redeemed, do not wear it out again, but preserve its
fertility by the use of high-grade commercial fertilizers and barn-yard
manure, always rotating the crops so as to get back to some leguminous
crop and lime at least once every four years.
Do not retard agricultural education by making warfare on commercial
fertilizers, for they are indispensable to every farmer in preserving
the fertility of the soil. The world employs the use of just about
one-tenth of the artificial fertilizers it should use, and about
one-half of what is used is used intelligently. Make war on low
grade fertilizers that have the attractive but deceiving feature of
cheapness, and buy grade fertilizers by the unit under the guidance of
the requirements of your soil.
Phosphatic Limestone.
The use of lime has been and is being sadly neglected, especially in
the Southern States and, when it is absolutely necessary to all soils
in which it does not exist or exists only in small or insufficient
quantities, it does look like the move to provide it is one of
imperative moment. Look at the Bluegrass Region of Tennessee and
Kentucky, the fairest and most fertile of God’s country. What made
it? The dissolution and weathering away of the original phosphatic
limestone rock. It is strictly a limestone country and teaches one of
nature’s great lessons that the agricultural world should accept and be
profited thereby.
All the limestone of this region contains more or less bone phosphate
of lime, and in this fact lies the whole secret. In the past ages the
foliage from the thick mass of trees and other vegetable growth fell
to the ground, soured, and formed an acid which immediately attacked
the bone phosphate of lime and converted it into phosphoric acid, while
the calcium carbonate or lime decomposed all vegetable matter and
conditioned it for plant food, neutralizing all acids and stood ready
itself to enter into all future and standing vegetable growth. Now the
forests have given place to the cleared fields and we no longer have
the dropping from the trees to enrich our soils, neither have we in
our fields in sections devoid of limestone any vegetation with roots
that extend deep enough in the earth to bring up the carbonate of lime
sufficient to support our crops. Therefore the vegetable matter the
cheapest of all manures, we provide by turning under green leguminous
or nitrogen-gathering plants. These plants sour and finally decompose,
but without carbonate of lime to perform its important duties of
creating plant food out of this decayed matter, all the fertilizer you
get from your crop is the nitrogen it has gathered from the air. Then
why not use powdered Tennessee phosphatic-limestone containing enough
calcium carbonate (not quick lime) to furnish desired results and no
more bone phosphate of lime than will be entirely and immediately
converted into plant food. If this phosphatic-limestone product is used
with leguminous crops, potash is the only plant food that you will have
to provide during the two crop seasons following; however, every soil
that has a clay subsoil is a safe bank that will retain all you place
on deposit, and if you have the money to spare, deposit it in the soil
by investing in high-grade fertilizers and draw a high rate of interest
on it instead of letting it stand idle. The calcium in the phosphatic
limestone will absolutely correct all free acids in the commercial
fertilizers, the burning, deleterious effects of which you may have
experienced, and it will rectify the sourness of any and all soils.
An object lesson in favor of this phosphatic limestone is taught
by riding along any turnpike macadamized with it and observing the
rankness of the crops about fifty yards on either side of the pike,
especially where the fields are worn and poor. This demonstrates that
it is the dust blown from the roads over into the fields that makes
the rank growth alongside the roads. It may be argued that the manure
dropped on the pike produced the results; but if so small an amount
of manure produced such wonderful results when mixed with the dust
from the pike, what would be the result if you would mix all of your
barn-yard manure with the powdered limestone?
Recently the writer made twelve tests or experiments with litmus paper.
The first ten of these experiments were made with blue litmus paper and
samples drawn from ten different fields, all of which have been under
cultivation for many years and have had liberal yearly applications
of acid fertilizers. The soils so tested are Alabama soils, and are
decidedly acid, as shown by the bits of blue litmus turning red on
coming in contact with them.
Everyone must know that it takes lime to neutralize the acids of acid
soils; but comparatively few farmers ever take the trouble to find out
whether or not their soils are acid, even after failing to get a catch
of clover three or four years in succession. All clovers positively
refuse to grow in acid soils. Inoculation will not do any good for
bacteria cannot exist and operate in such soils. Sweeten the soil and
nature will in most cases supply the bacteria.
Carbonate of lime enters into the frame of every plant and a lack of
it will cause soft stems and flabby leaves. It improves the chemical,
mechanical and biological condition of the soil. It flocculates very
light, sandy soils, making them compact and capable of retaining
moisture, while it prevents clayey soils from becoming pasty hard and
full of cracks by causing them to crumble when dry.
Lime is the great carrier into plants of other elements which go there
to form their organic compounds, during the elaboration of which,
organic acids are created, any and all of which would poison and kill
the plants were it not for the action of lime; so lime, in addition
to its all-importance as a salifiable base, becomes the great carrier
of all foods into plants where it is again of paramount importance as
a fixer of oxalic fermentation, thus having the natural and distinct
power to act where all other elements are useless.
It will correct sourness in any soil regardless of its origin, it will
neutralize all acids that come into the soil through cultivation,
through commercial fertilizers or green manurial crops. It will
facilitate cultivation and produce a greater porosity and granulation
of all soils and thereby lessen the bad effects of drought by reducing
surface evaporation, will obviate excessive capillary rise of moisture
which elevates the water-soluble foods above the zone of roots, provide
better circulation of air in the soil and will cause rapid percolation
of rain and thus reduce surface washing. It stimulates and increases
nitrification and decomposes vegetable matter, extracting from it
all plant foods and leaving humus to lighten the soil and retain
its moisture. It enters into the composition of all plant life and
therefore into all animal life, giving to animals its carbon combined
with the carbon of the air to furnish them fat, and its lime to furnish
them bone. It is the phosphatic-limestone that has made Tennessee and
Kentucky horses the strength to excel in work and racing, and it is
this same soil constituent that has given to the Jersey cow sufficient
butter fat to lead the world in butter tests. It enables the clovers
and grasses to grow, and without such crops what would the brothers of
the hoe do toward profitable farming and meeting the responsibilities
of life? It perpetuates and permits the use of commercial fertilizers
which are becoming so absolutely essential to husbandry, as it obviates
the evil effects of the acids these products contain, and makes all
plant food available to the plant. Finally, it is a property designed
by the Creator to act for and enter into all vegetable and animal life,
and evil will be the reward to him who rejects it.