The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-05-07
FERTILIZER COST KEEPS RISING AS
 DEMANDS CROW
(Goldn Age.

One of the costly items of a plant l factory, otherwise known as a farm, l is the fertilizer to make the plants 1 grow as they should The name of 1 1 fertilizer is legion. and their expense 1 l is one of the chief considerations in 1 deciding what crops to plant or what fields to plant them in Since the 1 war, the farmer has realized the in- creasing importance of watching his fertilizer bill; for the high cost of living has hit the fertilizer bill and reduced the possible margin of profit of many farm products. It was a godSend to the farms of ; | the country when H. D. Hughes, in | charge of the farm crop work of 1 Iowa Agricultural College, noticed a i strange, new plant in a clover plat.
 Many men would have disposed of 1 the new plant with the regular output 1 of the plant and thus lost a golden l opportunity. MT. Hughes, however, I what it was, and decided that he had
 made an epochal discovery.
 1 To the layHnan the discovery of a
 new plant may seem nothing unusual; i but the value of this new plant lies l in the fact that it affects the fertiliz- 1 ing of tens of thousands of acres and l will save immense sums on the fer l ti1izer bill.
 One of the most ancient practices l of we1l-ordered farming is based on | the fact that if plant is produced | year after year on the same land it
 both draws out the elements of the 1 earth requisite for the growth of that l plant and poisons the ground. in much 1 the same way that human beings poi
 son air by repeatedly breathing it. l-P1ants, too, have certain excreta; and l the growth of a given plant is greatly
 reduced if it's waste products are al- l lowed to accumulate in the soil.
 To obviate this tendency well-in formed farmers do not plant the
 same seed second year in succession,
 but follow one planting with a crop
 of another kind the next year, return
 ing to the first kind in three or four years This practice is termed rota-
 tion of crops.
 One of the pIants regularly used in the rotation of crops is clover. Glover l has the peculiarity of leaving in the i ground a fresh supply of nitrogenous l plant food, which is contained in little nodu1es attached to the roots. Nftrogenous plant food is the kind which is furnished by the manure
 from the barns, and is an indispensa-
 b1e element of food for most plants.
 Manure coming from live stock is
 limited in quantity and fertilizers con-
 taining nitrogen are costly; and many
 farmers supply the needed nitrogen ous fertilizer by planting clover in the regular rotation, cutting it off for
 hay and blowing the second Or third
 growth into the ground.
 II The trouble with clover has been that it has taken two years for the
 clover plant properly to develop; and
 the clover in the rotation took double
 the time of other plants. It was a |i great and benef1cent discovery when
 MT. Hughes ascertained the fact that 1 the new plant in his clover plat was
 a large variety of white sweet clover l which possessed the invaluable trait of maturing in a single year.
 Ii t This means that the farmer need no longer devote double time to get ting the soil enriched with the nitro
 genous plant food that clover sup II plies In innumerable instances
 farmers have avoided the use of clover
 in the rotation of crops and thus have lost the benefit to the soil that the
 clover supplies. Now the progressive
 farmer can use clover with out being put to the years loss that has hith-
 erto been his lot, and millions of
 farmers will plant clover more freely
 
 Ii According to the Rural New
 Yorker, one of the most interesting
 tests made thus far with the annual
 white clover was at the Iowa Agri- cultural Experiment Station in 1919, when the clover is sown with Iowa oats. The oats were drilled in at the rate of three bushels per acre and
 ordinary biennial clover was seeded at the rate of 15 pounds per acre, with a small amount of the seed of the new annual white sweet clover scattered in also. An excellent stand Of clover was secured. When the oats were in the milk stage they were cut with a mower for hay, clipping the clover plants off close to the ground. Follow ing the removal of the oats the clover
 grew vigorously. The biennial white sweet clover, which made a very thick stand, grew to a height of Is inches; while the annual white sweet a clover plants grew to a height of from three to nearly five feet.
 It is impossible to tell definitely where the new clover plant came from; but it is regarded as what is \ technically termed a sport that is s an odd change or development in a I regular plant apparently without 4 reason or cause Some regard such a d transformation as acc1d denta1; others 8 think of it as the kind of evolution by s which species and varieties of plants z and the lower animals came into ex- istence
 Readers of The Golden Age who s may be interested in the annua, a sweet clover may get information ana 2 seed by writing to Farm Crops Sec, @ ton, Iowa Agricultural College 1 Ames, Iowa.
 N CARMENCTTA