Norwich bulletin., 1914-09-19

w | | phate in 1t that the use of land plaster affects it like poison, while the rest of the same field may be starving for that very plaster.
 No two farms are alike; no two fields are alike; no single field that ever yet saw was alike all over
 Now, fertilizer Is just that thing which supplies to a soil the things needful for plant growth which that soil hasn't got enough of, naturally; or the antidote which neutralizes the harmful thing which may be too plentiful in it.
 To assume that the same fertilizer will do the same, when applies to a light gravelly soil, that it will do on a heavy clay loam would be just as absurd as for me to try to get my lead ore into pigs with your iron ore furnace.
 In fertilizing as in other things. you've got to make the punishment fit the crime.
 You've got to adapt methods to con- ditions.
 You've got to treat small pox with different medicines from rheumatism, and imeless soil with different fer tilizers from a well-lined one.
 suppose you buy commercial Ter- tiiizer guaranteed to analyze according to the formula "1-4-6". That means one per cent. nitrogen, four per cent. phosphoric acid and six per cent. potash. In other words, it means that, in every twenty hundred pounds you put. on your farm, you'll put on just twenty pounds of nitrogen, eighty pounds of phosphoric acid, and one hundred and twenty pounds of potash, two hundred and twenty pounds, all told, of plant-food or plant Stimulant. The other seventeen hundred and eighty pounds will be just "filler,''- which may be worth as much as seven teen hundred and eighty pounds of sand, and may not be.
 On the other hand, suppose you buy a commercial fertilizer analysing "6-S-12." In that case you'll. put on your fields 8 hundred and twenty pounds of nitrogen, a hundred and @.wo hunared and forty pounds of potash; five hundred and twenty pounds of "git-thaI'' stuff with only fourteen hundred and eighty of inert filleE."
 Naturally, that last fertilizer will cost more than the other, a good deal more.
 It may be worth more to you on your farm, and it may not be worth as much. The question of what it costs hasn't anything whatever to do with what it may be worth to you.
 Its value to you depends wholly on the profit it's use will bring you in the increased value of your crop, OVER the increased cost of the fertilizer.
 If bit of land has plenty of nitro gen already in it and only needs a little phosphoric acid and potash to sort or even things up, then the low priced fertilizer of low analysis may bring you better profit than the high priced one of high analysis. On the other hand, if the land lacks pretty nearly everything, is naturally barren on the very highest grade of fertilizer to raise anything at all.
 I've got one little field of an acre and half, one end of which wants nothing so badly as cheap land plaster. On the other end land plaster won't make even the weedss grow.
 I've got another bit where plain. fine ground lime, at $2.50- ton, will do more good than an equal weight of high-grade fertilizer, costing $45 a ton.
 The question is not wFat fertilizer is worth in money on the market, but what it is worth in corn and potatoes on your farm.
 That question neither dealer nor manufacturer nor college professor can answer.
 Your. farm is the only thing that can answer. And you're the only man it will answer to.
 But you haven't any laboratory. You couldn't use one if you had it How are you going to tell what your farm really lacks and needs.
 Ask it, man; ask iti
 You can get some help from the agricultural college laboratories. But, in the main, you've got to depend on the old rule of. thumb. You've got to experiment and test out, try what seems most promising and keep try ing, till the farm has answered you often enough, under varying seasonal conditions of differing years to teach you it's rule. Then, when you've learned 1t, stick to 1t. Follow it. But don't. in the name of shuddering com mon sense, start out on any crusade to make your neighbors do what you have done, just as you have done it. The very method which has turned your field into an oasis of fertility might, perhaps, turn your neighbor' S different garden into desert and a waste. Let him learn his own rule, as you've learned yours.
 Furthermore, when you're trying things out, don't jump too brashly at conclusions. Don't take one answer OF a single witness as establishing any case. Ask your question of other witnesses in other forms, and cross ex- anime them all before you let 'em off the stand. Don't get discouraged when the answers seem confusing and even contradictory. Nature never | contradicts herself. She can't. When she seems to, 1t is s-@ly seeming" :" and due to our bad es or faulty logic. She's straight" always and everywhere. But our poor eyes are | too often crooked.
 Above all, don't get dosmatie on | limited knowledge,-the fault of too | many farmers.
 1 And, to quote Josh Billings: Don't never prophecy onless ye knowI" THE FARMER.