The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-03-17
TIE Use If Chemical Fertilizers.

The writer, in presenting features of
his policy tDat bear upon extensive
farming in the East, has discussed the
sources of fertlnty depended on in
maintaining the supply of plant food
essential to broad tillage. Chemical
fertilizers are one of these sources, and
indeed source regarded as of extreme
importance. 1t is held that extensive
farming is scarcely economically possi'
BILE without reliance on these materials.
1t is highly probable that the attempt
would not have been made to farm on o
large scale, and by him therefore not
at all in New England, except for the
implicit faith placed in chemical fertil-
izers. Looking upon chemicals as one
of the greatest gifts of the age to the
farming of old sections of our country,
it is not without much surprise that the
reactionary articles that have recently
appeared in the Country Gentleman
have been read.
1t is easy and natural to attach too
much weight to the failure here and
there of individuals to secure satisfac-
The success of a few is vastly more
significant than the failure of like
number, because success is demon
stration of the inherent virtues of
chemicals, while failure may but show
the errors of the use-a failure to adapt
himself to his soil, or to secure ele-
ments needed. 1t may be the out
growth of one of many factors outside
of the capacities of chemicals that de-
termines failures of crops, such as sea-
sons, soils, method of use, proportion
of use, too free use, failure to apply the
element needed. etc.
Nothing is more clearly demonstrated
than that chemicals are plant food, for
again and again plants have been ma
tured on nothing but Observation-Disclosures
strating that chemicals are what the
great Liebig declared them to be when
he asserted that plant food acts through
its constituents, and that it matters not
whence those constituents are derived.
He was surely right, for plants are not
conscious, and care nothing about the
genealogy of an atom of potash
whether it traces its lineage back to
COW or to rock or a mine, provided it
is approached in the soluble form which
it must be in to enter the roots. This
view has not only the support of
abundance of plants grown in distilled
water to which chemicals alone had
been added, thereby demonstrating "a
great law, but the support of field trials
for long periods in Germany, England,
France and this country. Those of Sir
John Lawes are but little more con.
spicuous than other trials. He has
shown that few hundred pounds of
chemicals Tor half century have given
larger crops Of wheat than 40 tons of
yard manure yearly, or over 700 tons
for 30 years, the chemicals averaging,
in round numbers, 80 bushels Of wheat
yearly to the acre.
The writer has continued chemicals
on an acre for Is years for the grass
crop and has secured for So "a invested
in them 1908 pounds per year and at a
profit of nearly so to the acre. This
application was on the top of high
hill where percolation of water from
higher ground did not feed the crop.
Mr.. Wait falls into popular error in
or the qualities to retain humus."
Standing by itself the assertion is not
wholly untrue; yet 1t represents grave
error in its application to farm practice.
The weight of the roots of our plants
vary for the first foot of the soil from
1900 pounds to over 10000 pounds.
Some SO per cent of the weight of
these roots is derived from the air di.
rectly or indirectly. This means that
in the growth of crop, the roots take
from the air these proportions and in
their decay leave the bulk of it in the
soil, thus actually enriching the soil in
organic matter-the source of the humus