Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-05-10

| stock OF potash producing companies
| is popular among German spectators.
Potash has many and varied uses;
! however, it is used principally for fer
| tilizing purposes. The theory of its
effect upon vegetation is not exactly
understood, but it is a fact that land
which is poor in potash produces bad
crops, while the same land if thorough
ly fortified with potash will grow ex-
| oellent crops of many things. 1t is said
that the presence of much potash in
soil in some mysterious way protects
plants growing therein from the raw
ages of frost. 1t also affords drainage
in wet weather, retains moisture in
dry seasons, besides serving as a sort
of insecticide and fungicide.
Perhaps the explanation of the fer
tilizing effect of potash is found in the
fact that it has recently been dis
covered to be radioactive. 1t is said to
throw out the peculiar Beta" rays
with considerable velocity, which says,
it is believed, act as an anti-toxin on
| the soil. However that may be, potash
has a wonderfully Vitalizing effect upon
fruit trees, flowers and many crops.
| Tobacco needs potash perhaps, more
| than any other crop. Dry tobacco con-
tains forty parts of potash in every
thousand parts. An acre crop of to-
bacco takes seventy pounds of potash
from the soil it grows in.
Although the resources of American
| soils have seemed ineXhaustible, enor-
nous quantities of potash are imported
into this country, chiefly for use in the
manufacture of commercial fertilizers
| The annual imports are little short Of
| 900 pounds worth nearly half a
million dollars.
Scientists have calculated that fertile
soil contains about per cent of potash.
An acre of arabic soil one foot deep
will weigh nearly 100000 pounds. At
that rate there are nearly 10000 pounds
of potash in an acre of good land.
Vegetation absorbs the potash. The
oreticaly, therefore, a crop using fifty
pounds of potash per acre could be
| grown upon the same land for 400 con-
| secutive years without eXhausting the
potash. Compared with these figures,
on one hand is the known fact that
some land in the Old World has been
under cultivation for 1000 years or
more, apparently without exhausting
the potash in that soil; while on the
other hand there is evidence that after
a certain point is reached some crops
cannot be grown indefinitely on the
same land, although it may contain
| considerable potash.
In a word, nature seems to have
some unknown process of conserving
the potash resources of the soil, if she
does not renew them. And well she
may, because the removal of potash
| from the soil is very extensive. The
most complete removal occurs in the
case of such crops as sugar beets, of
which both the roots and tops are har-
vested. A sugar beet crop is said to re-
move IS pounds of potash from an acre
of land. Cereal crops remove twenty
eight pounds per acre, hay thirty-siX
pounds, potatoes fifty pounds and to-
bacco seventy pounds.
As potash is soluble in water, the
rain. washes 1t from the soil. AT the
same time, however, rain and the other
elements promote the decay of certain
rocks, the principal constituent of
which is potash, thus restoring vitality
to the soil. Lands reclaimed from
marshes and sandy soils need potash
| badly. Besides the pure German pot
ash fertilizer land may be enriched by
the addition of tobacco stems, cotton
| seed hulls, wood ashes, the straw of
cereal and leguminous crops, the resi-
dues of beet sugar factories and winer-
| les and other vegetable and animal
substances.
Besides it's value as fertilizing
agency potash is used to a considerable
extent in the manufacture of soap. 1t
forms the basis of common I've. Used
incidentally it is important and is ex-
! "
radioactive properties are better I'M
derstood. In the form of potassium
nitrate, or saltpeter, it goes to make
up many explosives. AS potassium
| cyanide II is used to extract gold from
one in the so-called cyanide process
Potassium bromide, cream of tartar
and tartar emetic are some of the COM
mon forms of potash with which we
come in contact.
Potash is related in some measure
to nitrate, of which nearly 100000
| tons are exported every year from
| Chile and Peru. The nitrate beds of
South America located in bleak des-
ert have been the cause of at least one
war; and they constitute perhaps the
most important source of revenue for
the Chilean government. Authorities
say that those nitrate deposits will last
for 200 or 800 years. Nitrates have
been produced artificially to some ex-
tent by the use of electricity.
The principal associates of potash in
the manufacture of commercial fer
tilizers are nitrate and phosphate,
and they are good only in some cases.
America has rich phosphate lands in
the west. Germany, while holding the
worlds supply of potash is taking
other fertilizing materials from the
United States, although her economists
many years ago decried against a SIM
liar practice on the part of England,
which was at that time digging up the
Napoleonic battlefields of the continent
to get human bones for fertilizer.
Copyright, 1905, by Frederic ]. Haskin,)