The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1898-03-03
FARMERs' INSTITUTES.

Their Educational Value as Explained by
Well Known Southern Authority.
Professor Massey of the North Caro-
lima state experiment station writes on
"How Institutes Have Educated Farm
ers' in The Farmers Institute Bulletin.
Following are extracts from his paper !:
Among all the educational agencies
of modern times in the line of what is
known as university extension the farm
ers' institutes have been most influen-
tial The progress that has been made
in the study of commercial fertilizers
and their proper use during the last Is
years is a surprise to those who have
not watched the course of events. Years
ago farmers, as soon as they began to
think at all about the manurial needs of
the soil, jumped at once to the conclu-
sion that the one thing necessary to be
done was to get a chemist to analyze
! their soil for them and tell them what
it needed. They had an indistinct sort
of notion that there were certain things
needed to make plants grow but just
what these things were they imagined
that only a chemist could tell. But the
chemists at the institutes explained to
them just what things were needed for
the growth Of plants and taught them
that these things were not always in a
state in the soil in which plants could
use them, and that, while chemical
analysis might show them that the
needed elements were in soil, they
might be there in such shape that
plants could not get them and that fire.
quently it might be better to apply these
things in a fertilizer than to wait for
the slow purposes of nature to give them
from the soil.
When manufacturers of artificial fer
tilizers first began to prepare special
fertilizers for different crops, they were
looked upon as quacks, and intelligent
men called the practice humbuggery
and said that a fertilizer that was good
for one crop was just as good for all.
But the chemists have learned that
these makers Of special fertilizers were
right, and now we all pay more atten-
tion to the needs of the plants we are
growing than to the soil in which they
grow. Farmers have learned, too, that
while the three things essential to plant
life nitrogen, potash and phosphoric
acid-which are generally deficient in
old soils, make complete fertilizer
they must be in varying percentages to
meet the demands Of different crops,
and the recent discoveries concerning
the way in which certain plants Of the
pea family get nitrogen for themselves
and the succeeding crop, too, if we'll
supplied with potash and phosphoric
acid, have shown them that they need
not in all cases use the complete ferti-
lizer at all, but that for the ordinary
farm crops they can get the nitrogen
without money and without price if
they use the mineral plant food to grow
the legumes.
The farmers are rapidly learning
that they have been often defrauded in
the purchase Of ready made fertilizers
by paying for nitrogen that is of no use
to the plants because of it's insoluble
condition, and that for special crops
they have got to have higher percentage
of some of the elements than any of the
ready made fertilizers supply. Hence
we find farmers all over the country,
particularly in sections devoted to the
culture of market vegetables and tobac-
co, mixing their own fertilizers, and
thus making sure that they have what
they need. They have learned, too, that
while crop may need potash partic
ularly they cannot expect the potash to
have the desired effect if there is a de-
ficiency Of nitrogen and prosphoric acid
either in the soil or in the fertilizer
used, and that to get the best results
from the use of any one Of the forms Of
plant food there must be either in the
soil or supplied to it artificially due
percentage of the other elements. They
have learned that while plant like to-
bacoo needs large percentage of potash
in fertilizer it wants it in the form of
a sulphate, and they look particularly
into the form Of the potash in mixed
fertilizer. And this general diffusion Of
intelligence in regard to fertilizers and
their action in plant life is due to the in
stitutes more than to any other agency.
The Potato Market.