Year: 1878

Experimental Farming


An experiment in agriculture ahould
be an intelligent question propounded to
nature. which will be intelligently an
swered if properly put. Thus, the mar
ket value of assimilable nitrogen in this
country is about thirty cents q pound,
and farmers and the manufacturers OF
fertilizers have experimental much to
learn what is the smallest per cent. of
this costly element that will answer when
combined with otheEs that will secure
satisfactory crops of wheat, corn, cotton
and tobacco. The best Peruvian guano
found twenty-five or thirty years ago
contained from fifteen to seventeen per
cent, of ammonia, or some four or five
times the amount of hydrogen that Bal
timore manufacturers of manure give to
their commercial fertilizers. It is be-
lieved this is an error perpetrated to save
the cost of nitrogen.


Some years since an eminent German
chemist, Hilldrigel: instituted expert
ments in plant growth to determine the
value of nitrogen in the form of nitric
acid and ammonia, The lowest quantity
he used was seven pounds to the acre; the
highest eighty-four. His results were
curious and instructive. SeveTpounds
increased the yield fraction over the
half of one per cent. (553). Fourteen
pounds gave gain Of l.776. In this
experiment, while the plant food given
is only doubled in quantity the harvest
shows an increase of three-fold. The gain
in the crop exceeds the addition of
nitrogen up to fifty-six pounds applied
to the acre. At this point the gain was
nearly fourteen times greater than where
seven pounds were used; yet fifty six is
not fourteen times seven.


Hilldrigel found that seventy pounds
of assimilated azote, or nitrogen, gave
the maximum yield of wheat, sixty
three of rye and thirty-six of oats. The
question for solution is how to apply
manure of any kind in such quantities
per rod or acreage as will give the farmer
the largest and quickest return for his
labor and money investment in plant
food. If ones fields lack ammonia, potash,
phosphoric, sulphuric and hydrochloric
acids, they need compound fertilizer;
and this is the condition of most farms
long cultivated. A commercial fertil-
izer sold at fifty dollars ton: which has
only two or three per cent. of nitrogen,
is dear manure.


Farmers in some sections have lost
millions OF dollars by purchasing some
thing they did not want, The prescrip-
ton for their land was made to benefit
Inc manufacturer of nostrum at the
expense of the tiller of the soil. We
live in an age of quackery in every
industry and profession. Two hundred
years ago the author of Hudibras said:
"The pleasure of being cheated is as
great as to cheat" IF this be true,
farmers should be the happiest people in
the world, for they are cheated On all
sides. They require for their protection
and enlightenment experiment stations
as in Germany, fully identified with
their interests. q


If a man has only manure enough to
seed one acre of plants properly, it is
serious mistake to spread it over two or
more acres. Experience proves that
dilution is generally unproftable; con-
centration wise and remunerating. In
tensive farming is concentration, bring
ing things to focus. Manure worth
thirty dollars for one hundred pounds is
a new fact in agriculture. This manure
clover, peas and other plants can draw
tronssthe air we breathe and the water
we drink. How does moss grow on
damp, naked rock, with no soil, no plow-
ing, no hoeing? Let common sense and
.ood for wheat grow in the same way that
moss and clover grow Nashville Ame-
lean.