Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1909-04-16
COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS.
Amounts Of Plant Food Requirements 90
Bushei Crop-Cost Economy and Soil Injury.

potassium and 20 times as much nitro
gen as was applied in the fertilizer.
More was taken from the soil itself
than could have been taken without
the fertilizer Then the fertilizer; con-
tains manufactured land plaster, one
of the most powerful land stimulanSs.
The farmer can wear ont his soil more
quickly than, he could without the.
stimulating action of the fertilizer.
There are. two ways to tell what
ones land needs Employ a CONNER
cial chemist or study the bulletins and
reports from the soil survey stations.
These may be obtained for a postal
card No soil in Illinois is deficient
in mere than one or two elements. of
plant food. Nitrogen sells at 10 cents
a Mound; it can often be used with
profit in market gardening, but never
in general farming. Buy water ii you
can in time of drouth, but don't buy
nitrogen for general farm crops. The
air has an ineXhaustible supply of It,
and it can be brought into the soil ny
clover and all legume crops.
lOF
For a 50-bushel crop of corn we
must plow under two tons of clover
hay or eight tons of manure to supply
the nitrogen, and whoever fails to DO
as much as that will finally have soil
that will not produce 30 bushels Of
corn. Nitrogen is contained only in
the humus or organic matter, which
gives 10 the soil its black color.
Phosphorus is becoming deficient in
most of the commons prairie and up-.
land timber soils of Illinois. Steamed
bone meal or raw rock phosphate
guaranteed to contain GO per cent ut
''bone phosphate of lime" has just -
per cent OF phosphorus.
Not Commercial Fertilizers.
At Rothamsted. England, wheat has
averaged 81 bushels per acre every
year for So years with heavy applica-
tions of commercial plant food. and
the last five years the yield has been
I3SS bushels. When no plant food has
been applied the yield has been only
10 bushels the last five years. But it
would take the 81 bushels of wheat o
pay for the plant food Pennsylvania
experiments for "a years show the
same thing. From all the iniorma-
| ton the world affords. including care
| full experiments and common eXper-
fence. the use Of commercial fertilizers
does not solve the problem of perma-
lnent agriculture for Illinois.
/ Phosphorus can be bought delivered
in most places in Illinois for 80 cents
! a pound in complete fertilizers, for y
cents pound in acid phosphate, for
| 10 cents a pound in steamed bone meal
and for 3 cents a pound in raw rock
/ phosphate.
| Raw rock phosphate is not readily
available, but it can be made available
/ by the farmer, if he will pillow it under
! with manure or clover 1t is the orr
ginal and natural phosphorus of the
/ soil and will never injure any soil.
! If the farmer will invest s4.6O an
acre in raw rock phosphate Gas. pres
ent prices every five years, his soil
/. will grow richer in phosphorus the
longer he farms il. unless he removes
more than 100-bushel crops of corn.
! Nest soils Have POTASSIUM.
| Potassium is very abundant in iii
/. normal soils of Illinois, but is very
I deficient in most peaty swamp soils
and in some very sandy soils. Where
needed. it can be applied most econo-
mically in potassium Chord, contain
/, ing about AZ per cent of potassium.
II Soils very deficient in deCaying or
ganic matter. as the worn gray prairie