The Tupelo journal., 1905-08-04
FARMER II DpLANTER
SOIL INDIGESTION


ment station has recently published
Bulletin No. 65, which Is unusually
| suggestive to men who are thinking
about fertility, commercial fertilizers,
and in general about the methods OF
increasing crop production. The title
THE Meteorological Analysis OF
Soils'-might scare some readers, and
| for that reason we have chosen a diff
ferent heading for our article. We as
| sure them that a bacterium singular
for bacteria) is something that one
| need not be afraid of, and 1t is we'll
that we should know Just how he is
helping us.
The bulletin goes OF to state that
fcrtyenine ANALYSIS of the typical soils
| of the United States showed as an av-
erage result that they had in the first
eight inches enough nitrogen to last
for ninety crops, enough phosphorus
for 500, and potash for 1000, and yet
these same soils where the chemist has
found SO much fertility may under GER
tain condition become 50 utterly bar
rem of results to the farmer as to lead
him to believe that they are actually
devoid of plant food.
The bulletin goes on further to state
that the soil at Rothamsted, England,
which has been cropped with wheat for
| fifty years without manure and which
had consequently been exhausted, pro-
| ducing only eight bushels per acre, still
contained phosphorus, in which it was
| especially exhausted, to last a hum
| dred years to come. We have seen this
three crops of wheat growing on it,
The reason this plot with a supply of
phosphorus to last a hundred years
had became exhausted was simply be-
cause it was not in shape to be avai,a-
Bile for the plants.
You say what has this to do with
microbes or bacteria? A very great
deal. The trouble with the Rotham-
| sted soil, and the trouble with nearly
| all soc-alleG exhausted ~soils,Is not. that
they are deficient in the elements sup
| piled by commercial fertilizers but be-
cause they are deficient in vegetable
Notwithstanding for the
bacteria or microbes to feed on. 1t is
through these that the unavailable
forms of plant food become available.
To quote from the bulletin:
When vegetable or animal matter
Is incorporated with the soil it under
goes a process of decay. In this decay
certain products are formed which
| react upon the insoluble or %unavaiIa-
BILE forms of plant food in the soil and
render them soluble and available.
This latter decay is brought about
through the agency OF myriads Of bac-
terra present in the soil"
Here is an idea which may be quite
new to many of our readers, and yet
it explains a good many things that
happen in their experience. You must
use vegetable matter in order to make
your mineral matter available to
plants; in other words, to allow diges-
ton and assimilation to go on. The
bacteria of the soil are simply cells,
and they do the work quite similar to
what the cells which line the glands
of our w bodies do in the process of
digestion. No matter how much food
We may have in our stomach, or the
stomachs of our live stock, it does
neither them nor us any good unless it
is digested. If our digestion is out of
order, or if we take something indi-
the drug store to get patent medicines.
If something is the matter with our
land which we do not understand we
buy commercial fertilizers. What we
need in either case is to get our diges-
tive system at work regularly without
| tones or stimulants, ant the best tonic
o car give to you land is vegetable
matter. This will start digestion to
work by giving it something to work
on, and the rest does itself. Man suf-
fers from Indigestion: SO does the soil,
and the WORKOUT sell is simply one
| that has a bad case of dyspepsia. Give
it something for the bacteria to work
on, and they will increase and multi
| ply and digest even the rocky particles,
thus furnishing available plant food.
| Then give it thorough cultivation SO
as to enable it to prepare food for the
| plant, and you have solved the problem.
Sometimes the soil becomes acid, and
needa an alkali-il this case lime
just as you, reader, may sometimes be
| troubled with soul stomach and need
| alkali. Plenty of good, plain food, we'll
cooked, and exercise out of doors will
keep a healthy man from getting sick
and will often make a sick man we'll.
| Plenty of vegetable matter for bacteria
the digestion cells of the soil-to feed
upon, and thorough cultivation, will
make a sick sell wave with productive
crops.
There is a closer relation between
mar and the soil than we sometimes
imagine. Both of the are liable to in
digestion, and as the man who has in
| digestion falls away in flesh because
he is using more force than his sys-
tenn is supplying him day by day, SO
soil that is troubled with indigestion
is using up plant food faster than It
can be made available in the soil, and
it. like a d~yspeptic man, oes into a
| decline, and is said to be worn out. We
do not thing the good Lord Intended
the soils of the Mississippi valley to
be worn out in ten, fifty or five hum
| dred years, and they will not be unless
the farmer allows them to get an at
tack through his neglect or ineficiency
| of either acute or chronic indigestion.
-Wallace's Farmer.
LET FARMERS CONSIDER.