Woodruff County news., 1901-11-16
FARMER AND PLANTER.
LEGUME SOIL IMPRovERs.
The Farmer Who HabitunIly Grows LcguminOus Crops Will Not
 Have a Rundown Farm

or fiber, which is sold away from the farm, the land. after few years, CT maybe a generation, fails to produce as good crops as formerly. Eventually it becomes unproftable to grow these crops. The farmers become inn poyerished. Country homes lack com fort and all the miseries of a decay ing industry are felt. In regions where the growth of the soil is fed on the farm to dairy or other ami mals, 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 off the farm comparatively little soil fertility is taken away, and this is, as a rule, more than made good by the food stuffs bought for feeding.
 The fertility of even the strongest soil is not ineXhaustible. It is similar to a bank account, and, like that, sooner or later exhausted, when the account shows all outgo and 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 very lit tie of this substance. It 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 3S,000 tons of nitrogen. Four-ffths 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 1O.6 pounds, potash IS pounds. One ton, or 33 bushels of wheat (grain) takes from the soil: Nitrogen 56.2 pounds, phos- phoric acid II pounds, potash 12.2 pounds. One ton of red clover hay takes from the air: Nitrogen 41.4 pounds, and from the soil, phosph horic acid 7.6 pounds, potash A pounds. One ton of cowpea hay takes from the air: Nitrogen 39 pounds, and from the soil, prosphoric acid 104 pounds, potash 29.4 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 one-half 10 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 phosphoric 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 1 called soil imDrovers. But without a | yearly dressing of phosphate and pot ash, our clover itself will in the course | of few years run out, in spite of
 
 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 potast Stable manure contains very little of these latter substances. It's value depends almost wholly upon it's nitrogen and the vegetable matter which, by de- cay in the soil, forms humus.
 The farmer who grows only lecu- 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 l 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 1t from the air by setting leguminous plants and their microbes as trans. Harness the nitrogen collecting mi crobe to your blow, 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.
 REVOLUTIONS AND REFORMS