The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-07-30

have grown poor while annual
NV ly growing cotton on the same
land with a little dribble of
PROFESSOR MASSEY. low-grade fertilizer, and
charges this poverty of soil to the fact that they
used commercial fertilizers. when it due to
ignorant methods in farming and neglect Of the
means for maintaining the humus in the SOIL
He proposes to use lime to enrich his land, but
while lime has valuable and important part to
play in farming, lime will never make poor land
rich. Lime is not properly fertilizer at all, and
is not used as fertilizer. though often sec 1t
advertised such. All of cultivated soils
have plenty of lime in them for all the use plants
make of lime as food We use lime to sweeten
the soil when 1t has become We use it on
lands that abound in insoluble potash such as
most of the red lands of the Southern Piedmont,
for lime has the power to release potash in the
soil. We use 1t to hasten the nitrifcation of or
ganic matter in the soil. but we must maintain
this by proper rotation of crops and the use of
animal manures. Lime is very useful in q good
rotation of crops. but used with the idea that 1t
is a fertilizer. we can soon run the land down to
a totally unproductive state through its use
Stable manure is excellent, Of course and
few Of US get enough of it. But stable ma
nure alone will not maintain the phosphoric acid
and potash in the soil. Every growing animal
takes phosphorus to form its bony system, and
thus carries phosphorus off the farm.
In fact, phosphorus is the one element that we
must add to all OF our old soils in some artificial
way We need never buy an ounce of nitrogen,
for we can maintain supply of this and in
crease the amount in soils through the grow
ing OF the legumes and feeding them to cattle
but we cannot get the phosphorus from the air,
and in some soils. especially the sandy soils of
the Atlantic Coast, potash is also needed. If
man is situated like DR.. Dietrich was on his little
farm in Pennsylvania so that he afford to buy
and feed grain grown on the land of other peo-
pie, he can avoid the purchase of any plant food
in fertilizer But such situations are rare, and
most of us must restore the wasted phosphorus
and potassium in commercial fertilizers.
When these are used for the purpose of in
creasng the production of peas and clover or
other legume crops, the feeding of which will
give us the needed supply of manure it will be
found that liberal applications will pay exceed
ingly we'll
But because thousands have been putting 200
pounds an acre of the poor 2-8-2 fertilizer on
cotton year after year, and have thus reduced the
fertility OF their SOIL this makes no cause for the
abandonment OF chemical fertilizers. For the lit
tie 2OO pounds OF 2-S-2 had in it's less than "a
pounds OF plant food to go over whole acre and
this was at once used up in the start and the
plants made strong enough to draw still further
on the plant food in the soil, and the natural re-
suit is depletion of the fertility of the soil.
Then all that is produced is sold off,
1t is this use OF commercial fertilizers that
do not believe in. But do believe in the heavy
use of phosphorc acid. and in many soils of pot
ASH to give us more of the legumes to feed and
more humus- making manure. The broad asser-
ton that you do not believe in commercial fer
tizers simply shows that you are ignorant of the
needs of plant life and Of our old soils.