152 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



this field^ — that was a year ago last March. All through the growing 

 season there didn't seem to be any perceptible difference in the growth 

 of the sweet clover where it was top-dressed and where it was not. The 

 clover with the exceptions of a few spots, did not meet my expectations. 

 It seemed to be sick — something the matter with it. I called in onr 

 county Agricultural Agent; had him come and loolc over the field, and 

 he got hold of Mr. McCool, of the College, and he came up and gave 

 it close examination; took sam])les to the College to see what he could 

 find out by an analysis of the soil. Mr. Willis at the Round-uj) claimed 

 that on a worn-out soil Ave needed lime. (?) My experience with this 

 field was disappointing along that line. It seems on the west side of 

 the field a number of years ago there was a hedge-row right along Ihe 

 roadside, and the men who rented this farm, in order to get as mudi 

 off it as possible, went to work and cut off the wood, and piled up 

 the brush and burned it, and wherever these brush piles were, the 

 sweet clover stood sometimes ten feet high, and then not more than 

 ten feet away from that spot, it made no such growth. They suggested 

 that this difference in the growth was due possibly to lime. I was un- 

 der the impression that possibly the excess of potash might have had 

 something to do with it. 



We went to work and cut the sweet clover; plowed it up, and gave 

 that field a systematic application of lime, putting on 500 lbs. hydrated 

 lime to the acre. Then followed this with an a])plication, starting on 

 the south side, using 10% potash and 10% pliosphoric acid, using 500 

 lbs. to the acre, and then left a strip a rod wide without using this com- 

 mercial fertilizer, and then continued as before. Along about the first of 

 October, on that strip a rod wide on which there was no commercial 

 fertilizer, it looked as though there was two months' difference in the 

 size of the clover. Also those spots that had brush burned a number 

 of years before, the clover and the alfalfa acted just the same as the 

 sweet clover, which I had had the year before. I called up Mr. Skinner 

 to look up the experiment, and he did so, and then he said, ^'Braman, 

 it looks as though lime had got a black eye in this field." 



I call attention to this to show you what that field seemed to be 

 lacking. This soil was analyzed, and ihej claimed, according to the 

 chemical analysis, that it was lacking in phos])lioric acid, but that it 

 was sour, and that if I would give that field 500 lbs. phosphoric acid 

 and about 3,000 lbs. of lime, that it would correct anything of this kiud. 



We had another field right south of it that we did make that appli- 

 cation and did that thing. We sowed the alfalfa just after we sowed 

 a field with sweet clover, and the results brought out the fact that 

 potash in the growing of sweet clover and alfalfa on worn-out soils 

 was the proper thing to do. 



I had another orchard of eleven acres which I have an application of 

 about 1,000 lbs. phosphoric acid last May when I plowed the orchard, 

 using about 2,000 lbs. of lime to the acre. I conducted an exi)eriment 

 by sowing one strip along about the first of July of sweet clover across 

 the orchard of two acres. Then another strip of rye, the balance seeded 

 to clover. Mind you, that orchard had lime and had phosphoric rock. 

 The sand vetch and the common clover seeined to do much better than 



