Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-12-18

This must be done on the farm. And
the same process that will decompose the
organic nitrogen and render il soluble
will also render the phosphoric acid
much more available, aud consequently
enhance its value
To truckers, gardeners and fruit
growers this subject should he OF special
interest, because a supply of soluble and
readily available manure is OF great I'M
portance. OF the large quantities of
manure they annually use il is quite
clear that they do not get half or a quar-
ter the effect that the plant-food it con-
tains is capable of producing, simply be-
cause 1t is not IN an available condition.
We want to convert nitrogen, which we
can buy or make for seven cents per
pound, into nitrogen which we cannot
buy for less than eighteen cents per
pound, and for which, as a matter OF
fact, we often have to pay--or at any
rate do pay-twenty-f or thirty cents
q pound And so with the phosphoric
acid. We can buy it in tankage and
coarse bones for three cents pound,
while we pay not less than eight cents
per pound for it in ordinary fertilizers;
and it is practically better worth the
eight cents when soluble than three
cents when insoluble. II this were not
the case we should not keep on paying
over twenty million dollars every year
for soluble phosphoric acid. That far
mers and gardeners can convert insoluble
nitrogen into soluble nitrogen, and thus
=
of doubt.
Several of our experiment stations have
shown that when manure is fcrmented
and afterward exposed to drenching
rains very large percentage of nitrogen
is washed away. And they earnestly
condemn the practice of fermenting
manure. They seem to overlook the
fact that, according to their own expert
ment, the insoluble nitrogen has been
converted into soluble nitrogen by fer.
mentation, or it would not be dissolved
and carried off by the rain. 1t is the
abuse and not the use of fer
mentation that they should con-
denim. When we have succeeded
in making the nitrogen soluble we should
put the manure on the land, or keep I'M
der cover, or in heaps so deep that there
is never rain enough falling on the sur
face to more than saturate the heap. In
other words, we should do as a great
many good farmers have done for the
last hundred years or more. But during
the last dozen years great flood of light
has been thrown on this subject. We
know now, at least in part, what causes
the decomposition or fermentation. We
have not space here to go into details.
Suffice it to say that the time will soon
come when we shall no more think of
manure without 'yeast" than
of fermenting beer or bread without
yeast. We should make the yeast on
our own farm. In fact it will make it
self; but we should encourage its growth
and preservation, and use it freely and
We should make ammonia
and nitrate at home precisely in the same
way as it is made in the rainless regions
of Chilli. We should have nitrate beds
on our own farms and in our own gar
dens. 1t may be said that there is not
nitrogen enough in ton of manure to
pay for the labor of piling and ferment-
ing 1t. In that case we can buy some
fish scrap or tankage that furnishes inso-
Iuble nitrogen at cheap rate, and spread
it, with the nitrate yeast, on the layers
Of manure as we make the pile. But we
must not forget the yeast, and it may
also be necessary to add some plain acid
phosphate to increase the growth of the
yeast plant and to prevent the escape OF
till it is converted into nitrate.
american 4gricuLturlst.