Norwich bulletin., 1914-09-12

(Wrtten Specially for The Bulletin.)
 It may seem a queer time O. year to talk about fertilizers. But it isn't Fertilizer talk is always on time, if it's worth talking at all. In my own personal experience I've found that the very best time of all to plan out my next years fertilizer campaign is while the results of this seasons work are right before my eyes.
 r We all fertiized or nanured, more or less, last spring, for our crops. Now the crops are here. We have an ex- hibit spread out right under our noses of the results. When could there pos sibly be a better time to study our failures and plan to better even our successes?
 Only, beg you, don't make the mistake which some farmers do of ascrilbing every failure and every suc- cess solely to the right or wrong use of fertilizer. That's what the testi- monial writers of the commercial fer tilizers do. It's the sort of stuff which the fertilizer companies print gladly in their advertisements.
 Nevertheless, it isn't always nor often fair. It savers of quacks and quackery.
 When a quack doctors patient gets well, the quack always advertises the recovery as the work of his Universal Cure-all." But the real physician is more modest about his medicaments. They have their uses as antidotes to some systemic poison or aids to na- ture. He resorts to them when the di- agnosis calls for them. But he is us ually the first to admit that any real and permanent "cure' is the work of Nature, and that the best service he can do his patient is to help Nature in | its curative processes. or, at least, re- (I~-&a ole ste-r Fertilizers are soil drugs, medicines | tonics, pre-digested foods. etc They are mighty useful and helpful. But they aren't the whole thing.
 The fertilizer manufacturers print | fancy catalogues, with wonderful tes- timonials from farmers, here and there. about what their particular brands have done for those particular farmers. The catalogues often include undoubtedly accurate photographs o1 phenomenal yields grown on So-and' Sos Superlative Phosphate. When I see those pictures. alway: want to know something more. abou them. The kind of soil, for one thing The kind of tillage, for another thing Whether it was a hot or a cool sum mer, for another thing. Whether i
 was dry or wet, for another thing
 Whether the rain came in a few bi, drenching storms or in numerous bi
 daily sprinkling showers, for anothe thing Whether the nights were coll
 after parboiling days, for anethe | thing. Whether the wild weeds an | briars grew rank on the unfertiliZe6
 untitled hillsides. for another thing And so on.
 tell you. there are lots of factor
 beside manure and fertilizers whicl go into the making of a bunkum crol of anything. whether corn and pota toes or golden-rol and bayberries. have been given few notable il
 iustrations of this, the present summe
 in my truck patch. Five acres 0
 garden -sass'' isn't sufficient to war
 rant the making of dogmatic asser
 tions addressed to men cultivatfnl farm crops by the hundred acres. But
 on the other hand, one is able t
 watch things closer and study then
 more deeply on five acres than on
 hundred The multiplication table in
 cIudes only. small numbers. It run only to twelve. But, once knowing il
 the scholar can multiply millions b.
 millions. The lesser often leads tn way to the larger.
 To begin with, was short of ma
 nure last spring and short of none.
 to buy high-priced commercial fer tilizers. That ism. a very uncommon
 condition with farmers. big or little.