The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1901-12-21
FARMERA PLANTER.
LEGUME SOIL IMPRovBRs.


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In all countries and on all lands
where the principal crop is grain, hay
or fiber, which is sold away from the
farm, the land. after few years, or
maybe generation, fails to produce
as good crops as formerly. Eventually
it becomes improbable to grow
these crops. The farmers become inn
poverished. Country homes lack COM
fort and all the miseries of q decay
ing industry are felt. In regions
where the growth of the soil is fed
on the farm TO dairy or other ani-
mails, the wealth and average comfort
of the farmer is greater than in
grain or fiber growing districts, be-
cause where animals and their prod
ucts alone are sold of the farm
comparatively little soil fertility is
taken away, and this is, MS rule,
more than made good by the food
stuffs bought for feeding.
The fertility of even the strongest
soil is not inexhaustible. 1t is similar
to bank account, and, like that,
sooner or later exhausted, when the
account shows all outgo ard no In
come.
The essential elements of plant food
are only three-nitrogen phosphoric
acid and potash. The first is the enc
OF most Importance, the most expen-
sive to buy and most difficult to hold.
No soils contain more than a very lit
tie of this substance. 1t is usually
the first element of plant food to be-
come exhausted. Yet every acre of
land upon the earth's surface has
resting upon it no less than $4,000
/ tons of nitrogen. Four-fifths of the
air we breathe is nitrogen. Unfortu-
nately no Agricultural plant or ami
NAL is able to feed directly upon the
store of nitrogen in the air. Legu-
minous plants are able to feed upon at
mospheric nitrogen indirectly through
microscopic bacteria, which grow up
on and eat the roots Of this class of
| plants. These bacteria do not grow
upon the roots of non-leguminous
plants. For example, one ton of tim
othy hay takes from the soil the fol-
lowing plant food. Nitrogen 25.2
pounds, phosphoric acid 10.6 pounds,
potash is pounds. One ton, or 80
bushels of wheat (grain) takes from
the soil: Nitrogen 56.2 pounds, phos-
phoric acid IA pounds, potash 1872
pounds. One ton of red clover hay
takes from the air: Nitrogen 41.4
pounds, and from the soil, phosphoric
acid 7.6 pounds, potash A pounds. One
ton of cowpea hay takes from the air:
Nitrogen 80 pounds, and from the soil,
prosphoric acid 10.4 pounds, potash
1914 pounds. If we grow timothy hay
and feed it to stock on the farm and
carefully return the manure to the
meadow, we return from onc-half to
four-fifths of the plant food taken
up in the crop; but if the crop is sold
away, the nitrogen in the soil is soon
exhausted and timothy dies out. If
we grow clover instead of timothy.
we take only phosphorjc acid and
! potash from the soil. If we feed the
clover and return the manure, we i'm
prove the soil instead of impoverish-
| ing it. This is why legumines are
called soil improvers. But without q
yearly dressing of phosphate and pot
ash, our clover itself will in the course
| of few years run out, in spite of
the stable manure we give il. Ugly
and worthless weeds of the dock and
| pigweed kinds come in. This presence
| of these weeds shows that the soil
contains plenty of nitrogen, but lacks
phosphoric acid and potash. Stable
manure contains very little of these
| latter substances. It's value depends
almost wholly upon its nitrogen and
the vegetable matter which, by de-
cay in the soil, forms humus.
Tie farmer who grows only legu-
'nines-that is, peas, beans, cowpeas,
clovers, vetch, alfalfa, etc.-can grow
these crops indefinitely and sell them,
or feed them, as he finds it most
| profitable to do, will never exhaust his
farm, provided he returns each year
potash and phosphoric acid equal to
that sent away in the crop. These
substances are cheap, costing
about four cents per pound in form
OF muriate of potash and superphos-
plate. Nitrogen costs about sixteen
cents per pound in nitrate of soda.
At the present prices of staple crops,
no farmer can afford to buy nitrogen
at any price so long as he can draw
! it from the air by setting leguminous
| plants and their microbes as traps.
Harness the nitrogen collecting mi
crobe to your pillow, and as Poor Rich
ard says:
"Plow deep while sluggards sleep
And you will have corn to sell and
keep"
Gerald Mccarthy, in Farm and
Ranch.
| pRV0T IyTT0Nc AMI DERnnRc