Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1889-03-04
Ayers Cherry Peetoral,
PREPARED EY
Or. J. c. Aver & Co., Lowell. Mass.
Institute at South Montville.

| Your correspondent attended the farmers
institute on Feb. 10 al South Nontville
Although the weather and travelling were
good, there was but a small attendance. A
large part of the best farmers in the vicinity
were conspicuous by their absence. There
were not more than forty present-there
should have been four times as many. Ii is
noticeable that when institutes are held in
| gooi farming sections the attendance is large
and the discussions by the farmers are inter-
esting and instructive. The farmers in good
4 farming communities are alive to the i'm
| portance of those meetings and take pains to
be in attendance. They know their minds
ARE brought into communion with others
with new and different ideas, for nothing
strengthens ones mind like contact and
| frictions with other and more active minds
| think the board does right in putting all
the institutes in the poorer farming sections ;
they are the ones that need all the
Encouragement they can get. The good
farming communities are capable of helping
themselves. In them one finds a gooily
amount of agricultural literature and farm
journals by careful perusal of which they
are enabled to keep well up in their profess
sion.
| Mr. Mckeens lecture on The relation of
feeding to the fertility of the soil" did not
hear. not getting there til he had closed !;
but it was presumed TO be an able and salts:
factory presentation of the subject.
Mr.. Gowell, formerly superintendent of
the college farm, delivered a lecture in the
afternoon on the use of commercial fertiliz
ers. He took the most consistent and COM
mon sense view of the subject ever heard.
Being a thoroughly practical man and having
peculiar facilities to study the history of the
use Of fertilizers, he was peculiarly adapted
TO discuss the question from a practical
standpoint. He said our farms are slowly
depreciating. The tendency of the soil was
to produce less crops. A long series of
cropping and returning less TO the soil than
was taken away was slowly removing its
vitality or crop producing capacity. In
order to avoid this various methods were
employed. The most plausible and the one
that was gaining in practice was the use of
commercial fertilizers. Many farmers
thought that by the use of a few hundred
pounds of fertilizer per acre they could
renovate their WORKOUT fields and produce as
good crops as they used to with liberal
dressing of manure. The speaker showed
that while chemists claimed that all we
needed TO apply to our soil is nitrogen, pot
ash and phosphoric acid, yet the great lack
D
matter. Though our soil is rich in all other
elements, lack of this makes them com
paratively useless. Unless a sufficient guam
tty of vegetable matter is there to supply
the iberous and woody substance of the
plant it cannot grow. Commercial fertili-
zers will not restore this 10 the soil 1t can
easily be done by blowing in manure or
muck or leaf mould or other similar sub
stance. Sawdust used to bed our stock and
spread on the soil was good TO assist the work
| for it is Just what has been taken from the
soil and its relation thereto in limited
quantity was beneficial. Iu short DO not
place your trust in fertilizers to very great
extent to renoyate the soil, but as an assist
ant to start the crops and help out the supply
of barn manure they were of value but they
can never take the place of it.
| The secretary of the board showed the
usual composition of fertilizers and said that
they bore no relation TO the composition Of
our crops; that they were a sort of an agri-
cultural blunderbus which farmers fred at
their crops and whenever it hit it was adver-
tised all over the land. He said that lead
ing manufacturer said they had got in the
habit of compounding fertilizers in a certain
way and that they differed but little in their
composition anyway that they did not pre-
tend that an analysis of ten of our leading
crops would show composition similar to
the composition of the average fertilizer.
/ Il. w. Ellis advocated the blowing in of
manure to get the best results. 1t appeared
from the testimony of those present that it
had been the most successful method. One
farmer said he turned his under seven to
nine inches and did not endeavor to turn it
back at the next blowing, and he had in
creased his hay crop 300 per cent.
On the whole the meeting was profitable
one. Being some twelve miles away |
could not stay to the evening meeting. which
was devoted to the discussion of the dairy in
I