The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-02-17


Last spring / determined to begin ex-
perimenting, to settle the matter for my
own satisfaction and advantage. have
long been using ground bone and bone
ash with perfect success and large profit
as fertilizers in my orchard and gardens,
and never could see anything in the
analysis of South Carolina rock to justify
the belief that it is any less soluble or
available as fertilizer than those
articles. And, furthermore, no chemist
has shown that the phosphoric acid of
our rich natural soils exists in any more
soluble form than in the softer mineral
phosphates. So / ordered bag of
floats " [South Carolina phosphate
rock ground to an impalpable powderl
from the local agent of the Bowker
Fertilizer Company, and selected for
the trial strip of land between two
rows of trees in a young apple-orchard.
The central twenty feet in width of this
strip was laid off into six rows, the five
interspaces being each four feet wide.
The land had received no stable manure
for several years, but had been moder-
ately dressed with bone fertilizers and
planted with garden peas, beans and
early potatoes for market. Enough of
this fertilizing material remained in the
soil to raise it above barrenness, but not
to fit it for crop. 1t was very uniform
in its condition, as had been shown by
previous crops.
proposed to make the test on both
corn and potatoes, three rows of each,
and divided the strip crosswise into
three equal sections of one hundred
feet each. The two end sections were
dressed in the drills with Bowker's Hill
and Drill Fertilizer, and the middle sec
ton with mixture of floats, unleached
hardwood ashes from my own fires and
sulphate of ammonia, calculated to give
precisely the same composition, as re-
CARDS phosphoric acid, nitrogen and
potash, as the Hill and Drill Fertilizerlas
analysed at the Massachusetts Expert
ment Station. AS most readers are
aware, the last spring and early sum-
mer were very dry-with me so dry that
toward the end, at the time when the
corn was beginning to show the point of
the tassel within the circle of the inner
leaf, and the potatoes were budding to
bloom, the soil to the bottom of the fur
row in my light ground would run out
hand. AT the end of that dry spell, just
before the rains came, the parts dressed
with Hill and Drill were clearly ahead
in growth, so that the middle section.
where the floats were applied, viewed
crosswise, was plainly lower than the
two end sections. There was, however,
no difference in color.
The last week in June the drouth was
broken, and from that on there was
rain enough. In ten days no differ
ence could be seen in the two sections,
and as the time of harvest approached
repeated examinations showed that the
corn early Dean SWEET and potatoes
(Snowflake) were ready for use at the
same time; and finally the ripe crop
was quite uniform the whole length of
all the rows.
But our single experience is not
obliged to stand alone in this matter.
In one of the recent monthly reports
of the South Carolina Department of
Agriculture there is an important
paper by Baron II. Won Liebig, trans
lated by Professor,Guerard, on Raw
Ground South Carolina Phosphate or
Floats. " This able agricultural chem
list declares that the greater efficacy of
the dissolved phosphates consists only
in their fineness when they enter the
soil. He adds that it stands to reason
that the higher the degree of fineness
of the raw phosphate is, the nearer it is
brought to the dissolved in manurial
effect. But experiment has shown that
raw ground phosphate of far coarser
mechanical condition than that pro-
duced from the South Carolina phos-
plate was only ten per cent behind pre-
cipitated phosphate, when used in guam
titles of not less than one hundred
pounds of phosphoric acid to the acre.
Baron Liebig then shows that fine grind
ing adds materially to the manurial value
of raw phosphate, making it indeed
nearly equal in efficacy to dissolved
phosphate, because it is thereby en-
abled to yield larger per cent of its
phosphoric acid. South Carolina phos-
phate, passed through sieve of forty
meshes to the inch, yielded 1916 per
cent of phosphoric acid. Passed through
a sixty-five mesh sieve it gave 36.S per
cent, while a one hundred thirty mesh
sieve enabled it to yield 76.4 per cent.
All of the fine ground South Carolina
" floats " tested by him passed entirely
through the one hundred thirty mesh
sieve.
The inefficacy of " insoluble phos-
pilates, Baron Liebig goes on to say.
especially in poor soils, is caused often
by want of potash in the land. This
constituent should therefore be supplied
to the soil along with the phosphoric
acid, and that is exactly what we did,
making a complete fertilizer by also
adding the proper proportion of nitro
gen in the form of sulphate of ammonia.
We sincerely hope that experiments
will be made all over the country, by
experiment stations, agricultural col
leges and intelligent individual farmers
to the end that we may all get our phos
phatic plant food in the cheapest avail