Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1916-08-04
SOIL AND SOIL FERTILITY.
FERTILIZERS,
By De F. Hungerford, assistal

GSlCnCnlSu, university 0t ArKanSdS. Many people consider fertilizers to be merely soil stimulants which cause increased production for a few years, but in the end do more harm than good. There are others who have So much faith in fertilizers as to cOnsid- CT them a panacea or "cure all" capa- ble of remedying any possible defect the soil might have. They even ex- pect fertilizers to take the place of proper cultivation These are both extreme views and neither is to be accepted as a, general rule.
 Fertilizers are not soil stimulante any more than good nourshing food is a stimulant for a man. Plants must have certain substances in or der to grow and these substances are supplied by commercial fertilizers On the other hand plants need other things besides food, They need air, moisture, light and warmth. Fertil- izers will not take the place of these any more than food will take tho place of water or air or warmth for a man. All are essential.
 The plant foods most likely to b" ii>SNSN Ny DIp Ito ui llOSSjl. DIlo'' phoric acid, and potash; therefore these are the ones contained in fer tiliZers. If all three are contained in one mixture it is called a "com plete fertilizer" A great many sub stances arc used as fertilizers which contain one or more of the elements Among the more common ones con
 taining nitrogen arc: Nitrate Of soda. sulphate of ammonia. cotton seed
 meal, tankage. dried blood, and cal cium cyanide or lime nitrogen. Cot ton seed meal and tankage contain phosphoric acid in addition to nitro
 gen. Other phosphoric acid contain
 ing materials are bone meal. acid phosphate or super phosphate and
 raw rock phosphate or floats. The
 potash containing materials are near
 ly all obtained from Germany. They
 are sold in this country as sulphate
 of potash, muriate of potash and
 amount of potash is supplied in wood
 ashes, tobacco stems and in kelp
 which is kind of seawecd found
 growing on the Pacific coast.
 The complete fertilizer most com
 monly used in the South is 1.G5-S-2
 That is, it contains 1.65 per cent of
 nitrogen, 8 per cent of phosphoric
 acid and per cent of potash. It is
 low grade mixture and is used chiefly for corn and cotton. Such
 fertilizer can be purchased ready
 mixed or the ingredients can be
 bought separately and mixed at home.
 To mix fertilizers at home it is nec-
 essary to have scales for weighing out the different portions. a tight
 floor upon which to do the mixing and large sand screen for removing
 the Jumps. The first step in mixing
 up batch of fertilizer is to determine
 the amounts of nitrogen, phosphoric
 acid and potash that are required per
 ton. This is found by multiplying
 the percentage by 20 Thus a 1.65-S-2 fertilizer contains 2Gx1.G5 equals 33
 pounds of nitrogen; 20xS equals 160 pounds of phosphoric acid and 20X2 equals 4G pounds of potash. The
 next step is to determine the amounts
 of the different fertilizer materials that will be required to supply this amount of nitrogen, phosphoric acid
 and potash. This calculation is sim pie if the material contains only one ingredient but is somewhat more com
 plicated if it contains two or more
 ingredients.
 Suppose the nitrogen is to be sup piled in nitrate of soda. the phos-
 phoric acid in acid phosphate and the potash in kainit. Nitrate of soda con- tains about 15 per cent of nitrogen. To find the amount required to fur nish B lbs. of nitrogen multiply B by 100 and divide by 15. This gives