Nitrogen fertilizer

“ There has been a disposition on the part of many farmers to regard fertilizers only as stimulants, due to the irrational use of certain materials, but a good commercial fertilizer is a carrier of some or all of the necessary elements that we find in stable manures. They may carry nitrogen, phosphoric acid, or potash,—any one or two or the three,—and the three are the constituents that usually are lacking in available forms in our soils. Examples of the best modern skill in farming may be found in the rational selection and use of commercial fertilizers. ”

“ In this way, so far as our present knowledge warrants us to affirm, organic matters, decaying in the soil, continuously yield portions of their nitrogen in the forms of ammonia and nitric acid for the nourishment of plants.
The farmer who skillfully employs as a fertilizer a peat containing a good proportion of nitrogen, may thus expect to get from it results similar to what would come from the corresponding quantity of nitrogen in guano or stable manure. ”

“ We do not buy nitrogen in a pure state. We buy a ton of material to get the needed 260 pounds of nitrogen. Thus it is with nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, acid phosphate, muriate and sulphate of potash, and all other fertilizer materials. As freight must be paid upon the entire ton, it usually pays best to select materials that run high in percentage of plant-food. It is possible to get very low-grade fertilizers that have not had any foreign material added by the manufacturer. An acid phosphate may be poor in phosphoric acid because low-grade rock was used in its manufacture. ”

“ The seed may be either drilled or broadcast, but drilling will give more uniform stands.
Fertilizers
When the crop is planted on extremely poor soils, good stands and growth cannot be expected. Such soil conditions may be improved by the application of manure and phosphate fertilizers or by turning [Pg 4] under such crops as cowpeas, soybeans, or lespedeza. In many soils of low fertility the use of 50 to 100 pounds per acre of a nitrogen fertilizer will encourage early seedling growth and establishment. ”

“ If for several years before potatoes are planted the land has been properly manured with farm manures, or with green crops plowed under, commercial fertilizers can be advantageously used on most soils. Generally, a complete fertilizer should be used—i. e., one which contains nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. The farmer is justified in supplying all three of these fertilizing ingredients, unless by previous tests he has learned that on his soil a certain one of them can be safely omitted. Of nitrogenous fertilizers, one of the best for potatoes is the quick-acting nitrate of soda. ”

“ If crops which grow from the soil are removed year after year, the soil becomes poorer in nitrogen, and finally possesses too little of it to support vigorous and healthy plant life. The nitrogen of the soil can be restored if we add to it a fertilizer containing nitrogen compounds which are soluble in water. Decayed vegetable matter contains large quantities of nitrogen compounds, and hence if decayed vegetation is placed upon soil or is plowed into soil, it acts as a fertilizer, returning to the soil what was taken from it. ”

“ The lack of nitrogen and potash has equally disastrous effects on the production of the crop. It is, therefore, not only a supply of plant food that is necessary, but the balancing of it in order that our soil may produce a maximum crop of best quality. The fertilizer industry is an industry engaged entirely in the supply of these plant food elements. It is, therefore, a direct contributor to the maintenance of the human race, in that it deals in the elements of plant food. ”

“ A peat in which nitrogen exists in as large a proportion as is found in stable or yard manure, being used in larger quantity, or being more durable in its action, may for a few seasons produce better results than the latter, merely on account of the presence of this one ingredient, it may in fact, for the soil and crop to which it is applied, be a better fertilizer than yard manure, because nitrogen is most needed in that soil, and yet for the generality of soils, or in the long run, it may prove to be an inferior fertilizer. ”

“ Such a crop gains 131⁄2 pounds of nitrogen by the addition of saltpetre, or 28 per cent. A similar result was obtained with clover—a leguminous crop. A potassic fertilizer increased the yield of nitrogen one-third. One of the anomalies observed in the study of plant growth is that a good crop instead of exhausting the soil seems to improve it. The better the crop, and the more nitrogen removed, the better will the succeeding crop be. ”

“ The consumer can get his own basis for an estimate by obtaining the best possible cash quotations from city dealers. Some interested critic may point out that nitrate of soda should not be the sole source of nitrogen in a fertilizer on account of its immediate availability. Manufacturers use some sulphate of ammonia, and a pound of nitrogen in it has had practically the same market price as that in nitrate of soda. Tankage may be used in part, and in it the nitrogen costs very little more per pound. ”

“ Dried blood is another first-class fertilizer—in fact it would be difficult to enumerate all the wastes which can now be profitably exploited for their soil-nourishing values. Speaking broadly, it may be stated that any refuse which, upon investigation, is able to yield 3 or more per cent. of nitrogen demands further examination for the discovery of the cheapest ways and means to reduce it to a fertilizer for sale at an attractive figure. If price be right no apprehensions need be entertained concerning disposal; the farmer will absorb the plant food, to nourish his crops, with eagerness. ”

“ If one has only a small garden or a home yard, it ordinarily will not pay him to buy the chemicals separately, as suggested above, but he may purchase a complete fertilizer that is sold under a trademark or brand, and has a guaranteed analysis. If one is raising plants chiefly for their foliage, as rhubarb and ornamental bushes, he should choose a fertilizer comparatively rich in nitrogen; but if he desires chiefly fruit and flowers, the mineral elements, as potash and phosphoric acid, should usually be high. ”

“ That is one of Nature's ways to perpetuate itself. But I think there a constructive angle in those trees that respond to nitrogenous fertilizer or manure. I believe the secret, if there is a secret, is that a tree in bearing a crop exhausts itself more or less. It recuperates the following year and then is ready to bear another crop. And the way to meet that situation is to fertilize heavily, especially with nitrogen, the season of the heavy crop so that you will have not only enough leaf growth to produce that crop, but to build up nutrients the following year. ”

“ Nitrate of soda will act alone and will stimulate growth, and there are cases in which there is enough phosphate and potash already in the soil to act with it. Usually, however, it is customary to use a complete fertilizer containing phosphate and potash as well as nitrogen, in order that the plant may be more roundly supplied and promoted, and one would be a little safer in using that sort of fertilizer than in relying upon the nitrate of soda alone. ”

“ It gets the best of the nitrogen, and may need only a rock-and-potash fertilizer, while the wheat that follows may need some available nitrogen to force growth in the fall. There is no fixed formula for any field or crop, and the point to be made here only is that the requirements of many standard crops do not have the dissimilarity usually supposed, except in respect to quantity. ”

“ It demands that plenty of nitrogenous food be in the soil. That is, the soil should be well supplied with humus, preferably derived from decaying leguminous crops or from stable manure. A favorite commercial fertilizer for parsley consists of 3 per cent nitrogen, 8 per cent potash and 9 per cent phosphoric acid applied in the drills at the rate of 600 to 900 pounds to the acre in two or three applications—especially the nitrogen, to supply which nitrate of soda is the most popular material. ”

“ If the soil is sandy and deficient in potash, the percentage of phosphoric acid may be cut to 8, and the percentage of potash raised to 10, and all these crops will profit thereby. If the nitrogen content in the soil is high, none of these crops may need nitrogen in the fertilizer. This is a general principle, and safe for guidance, though the best profit will demand some modification that readily occurs to the farmer as he studies his crops and their rotation. To illustrate: The corn is given the clover sod or the manure partly because it requires more plant-food than the wheat. ”

“ The land that grows heavy clover in a close rotation, or receives all the stable manure, may need neither nitrogen nor potash, while another field, hard-run by timothy and corn, may need a complete fertilizer. When a careful fertilizer test on land of only average productive power has been made, the owner has some definite knowledge of his soil that enables him to give more intelligent treatment to all his fields than was possible before the test had been made. ”

“ It is a powerful source of nitrogen with significant amounts of phosphorus. Like other slaughterhouse byproducts its high cost may make it impractical to use to adjust the C/N of compost piles. Seed meals or chicken manure (chickens are mainly fed seeds) have somewhat lower nitrogen contents than animal byproducts but their price per pound of actual nutrition is more reasonable. If hoof and horn meal is not dispersed through a pile it may draw flies and putrefy. I would prefer to use expensive slaughterhouse concentrates to blend into organic fertilizer mixes. ”

“ Commercial fertilizers generally contain nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash in amounts varying with the requirements of the soil. Wheat requires a large amount of phosphorus and quickly exhausts the ground of that food stuff; a field which has supported a crop of wheat is particularly poor in phosphorus, and a satisfactory fertilizer for that land would necessarily contain a large percentage of phosphorus. The fertilizer to be used in a soil depends upon the character of the soil and upon the crops previously grown on it. ”

“ The production of nitrogen for plant food in peace and explosives in war is more and more important. It is one of the chief sustaining elements of life. It is estimated that soil exhaustion each year is represented by about 9,000,000 tons and replenishment by 5,450,000 tons. The deficit of 3,550,000 tons is reported to represent the impairment of 118,000,000 acres of farm lands each year.
To meet these necessities the Government has been developing a water power project at Muscle Shoals to be equipped to produce nitrogen for explosives and fertilizer. ”

“ By growing crops of legumes and turning them under to decay in the soil, or leaving the roots and stubble to decay after the crop is harvested, he can furnish the following crop with a supply of nitrogen in a very cheap manner and lessen the necessity of buying fertilizer. ”

“ Thornton, "but I hope yet to learn more about those 'suitable conditions' for nitrogen-fixation and nitrification. It begins to look as though the nitrogen cycle deviates a good deal from a true circle, and nature seems to need some help from us to make that element circulate as fast as we need it. I confess, too, that this method appeals to me much more than the twenty-cent-a-pound proposition of the fertilizer agent."
"Yes, indeed," added Miss Russell; "and if we had to spend three dollars an acre on this farm our 'Slough of Despond' would be worse than the slough, or swamp, Mr. ”

“ Nothing then can be more certain than the fact, that an exportation of nitrogenised products does not exhaust the fertility of a country; inasmuch as it is not the soil, but the atmosphere, which furnishes its vegetation with nitrogen. It follows, consequently, that we cannot increase the fertility of our fields by a supply of nitrogenised manure, or by salts of ammonia, but rather that their produce increases or diminishes, in a direct ratio, with the supply of mineral elements capable of assimilation. ”

“ When, on the other hand, the crop residue is nil, as in the case of a bare fallow, or very small, as upon unmanured land, there is either none, or an insufficient replacement of the annual loss of organic matter in the soil, and the nitrogen of the soil consequently falls.” “The proportion of nitrogen in a soil can only be maintained when the supply of ash constituents (phosphates and potash) is sufficient to furnish the necessary amount of crop and crop residue.” ”

“ Each wheat crop takes more nitrogen from the soil, and finally, if this nitrogen is not given back to the earth in some way, wheat will no longer grow in the fields. In other words, we say the farm is "worn out," "cropped to death." The soil is there, but the precious life-giving nitrogen is gone. And so it becomes necessary every year to put back the nitrogen and the other elements which the crop takes from the soil. This purpose is accomplished by the use of fertilisers. Manure, ground bone, nitrates, guano, are put in fields to restore the nitrogen and other plant foods. ”

“ To increase or maintain the nitrogen and organic matter of the soil is the greatest practical problem in American agriculture. In an hour's time one can spread enough limestone or phosphate on an acre of land to provide for large crops of wheat, corn, oats and clover, for ten or twenty years, while to supply the nitrogen for the same length of time would require from 20 to 40 tons of clover, or from 80 to 160 tons of farm manure, to be added to the same acre of land, even though one of the four crops harvested secured its nitrogen from the air. ”