306 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The soluble phosphate is especially beneficial to plants in the early state of their 

 growth, giving them a good start. In later stages of growth when the plant by its 

 roots can forage for food in the soil, the insoluble phosphate may have nearly as benefi- 

 cial an effect. 



Phosphates promote the formation of flower and fruit and secure earlier ripening. 

 They may wisely be used on vines and succulent fruits that are liable to be cut by 

 early frosts in autumn, securing early crops with better prices and avoiding the loss 

 of the entire crop by untimely frosts before the most of the crop had ripened. Fruit 

 trees sometimes blossom year after year without producing fruit. This is often caused 

 by storms at the period of flowering, but it may be caused by constitutional weakness, 

 in consequence of which pollen of vital power is not formed. In such cases the use of 

 active phosphates is worthy of trial. 



3. Bone Meal contains phosphate of lime and animal matter rich in nitrogen and 

 hence is very valuable for manure where w r e desire a prolonged influence. It is well 

 adapted to grass lands and lawns, and is free from the bad odor often given off by mixed 

 fertilizers. Moist meadows are benefited by a dressing of bone meal. If the bones that 

 now adorn the back yard and pasture lot should be ground into a powder and scattered 

 on a crop-worn field, the results would surprise some farmers. 



4. Potash Manure. The best and cheapest is that neglected home product— wood 

 ashes. These contain an average of five per cent of potash, besides a sensible amount 

 of phosphate, and a very large amount of carbonates of lime and magnesia; they are 

 an all-round plant manure so far as mineral matter is concerned, supplying each ash 

 element. 



Unless the farmer can bring into active form the great store of potash in his soil, 

 he will then have to buy the German potash salts, the muriate or sulphate. These 

 -alts are yearly coming into greater prominence as potash fertilizers, but their sale in 

 Michigan in separate form has not been large. 



The influence of potash on plant life is masterful; no plant can grow without it, and 

 its influence in developing the carbohydrates, and maturing fruits, is marked and 

 apparently controlling. 



5. Nitrogen Compounds. Nitrogen is the bottled wine of the vegetable feast. If the 

 term stimulant can be applied to any organization destitute of a nervous system, then 

 nitrogen is the stimulant of plant life. In any of its combined forms it gives depth 

 of color and exuberance of growth to vegetable life, and when in abundant supply it 

 causes the plants to break forth into riotous growth. The great reservoir of nitrogen is 

 the air, but the leaves of plants though constantly bathed in nitrogen, cannot drink 

 in a particle. It is only nitrogen in combination that can be appropriated by the plant, 

 and this enters the plant by the roots and comes from the soil. A small amount is 

 brought to the soil by the rain, washing out the ammonia and nitrates of the air, but the 

 amount is not large and entirely inadequate to supply a crop. 



A large amount of active nitrogen in the form of nitrates is yearly formed in every 

 well cultivated field, and this is the cheapest way of securing a supply of this costliest 

 element of plant growth. The raising of leguminous crops, like the clovers, is the 

 next cheapest way of securing a supply. 



Combined nitrogen is purchased in three forms: salts of ammonia, nitrate of soda, 

 and organic nitrogen in the form of dried blood, fish scraps, cotton seed meal, etc. 



6. Tankage, is a complex and variable material obtained from the waste residues at 

 the slaughter houses, the garbage collected by the scavengers in cities, etc. These 

 materials are dried, the grease extracted in tanks and this tankage by itself, or mixed 

 with phosphates, potash, etc., is sold as a fertilizer. It is mainly used to give bulk to 

 the concentrated fertilizers made from bone and rock phosphate. 



