Vol. XIII. Xo. 3l>1. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



263 



PLANT NUTRITION. 



FURTHER EXPERIMENTS WITH 



BACTERIZED PEAT. 



The well known English seed merchants ^Mes.srs. Sutton 

 and .Sons of Reading, liave recently enabled an interesting 

 series of trials to be made in their grounds with a view 

 to determining the practical value under Englisii condi- 

 tions of Professor Bottomley's bacterized peat. There were 

 two series in the experiments, one in which the manurial 

 value of the new substance (for an account of which, see the 

 Agrirulturrd Neirs, Vol. XIII, j). 19S) was tested on plants 

 growing in the open ground, and another in which the plants 

 were devek>ping in pots and bo.xes. 



The fact is strongly empha.sized tliat in the outtloor 

 experiment, results have lieen considerably upset through the 

 occurrence of a drought while the trials were in progress. It 

 is not neces.sary in this article to describe the procedure 

 adopted in the experiments in detail — an account of the.se 

 matters will be found in the Gardener's Chronicle for 

 •lune 4, 1914: it will be sufficient to state that in the out-door 

 experiments it was difficult to draw an}- definite inference as 

 to the beneficial efiect jjroduced by bacterized peat owing to 

 the limiting factor already mentioned, namely, the restricted 

 water-supidy. 



But when artificial watering was adopted in onler to 

 compen.sate for the lack of lain, very different results were 

 obtained. In the first experiment with lettuces and radishes 

 grown in ordinary garden soil and manured with dift'erent 

 substances which included guano and bacterized peat, the 

 results .showed the.se two substances to be of about equal 

 value. l)Ut the most interesting series of trials and the one 

 which seemed to show conclusively that bacterized peat is of 

 value was that in which radishes (96 per box) were grown in 

 ordinary .soil in boxes 1 yard square and treated as indicated 

 in the following table: — 



Roots. Tops. Total Weight. 

 I'ontrol. lb oz. R), oz, lb, oz. 



St 





 12 



8.1 



1 



■■i.l 



1 



8 



Two boxes (average) <) 1 1 



Farmyard manure, small 



dressing () 12 



Guano (i-oz. before .sowing 



and ^-oz. top dressing) 14 8.1 1 (>J 

 A well-proved fertiliser (1.', 



oz. before .sowing and 



U oz, top <lre.s.sing) 1 11 1 H 



Nitiolim (3 oz, per box 



before sowing) I .S <) 12 1 l,") 



Bacterized peat (4 oz,) 1 SJ, 13.V 2 (> 



Bacterized peat (8 oz,) 1 o' ll" 2 



The Editor of the Gardeners' C/ironide, who has seen 

 the experiments, .says: — 



'The result is remarkable in several ways. It shows, 

 first, that bacterized peat is of high manurial value; second, 

 that the increase affects both roots and tops (leaves) but the 

 former more than the latter: and, third, that — as has been 

 observed in other experiments — a lighter dressing of bacterized 

 peat is s(jniewhat more ettective than is a heavier dressing. 

 Incidentally, the experiment goes to show that nitrolim — 

 containing, as it does, both nitrogen and lime in combination, 

 is a fertiliser which deserves a good trial on garden crops. 



'To sum up: The thorough and careful experiment 

 carried out l:>y Messrs. Sutton leads to the conclusion that 

 whereas l)acterized peat, used in the relatively small ijuantity 

 in which it can be used effectively, does not appear to exerci.se 

 a beneficent action on the water.-holding capacity of the soil, 

 it has valuable manurial properties, and these properties ilo 

 not appear to be limited to the provision of nitrogen. 



'Tho.se who have most experience with the carrying out 

 of experiments will be most careful not to attach tmdue 

 weight to anj- single experiment. !More trials are wanted 

 before a final pronouncentent can be made as to the manurial 

 \alue of bacterized peat. Xevertheless the evidence obtained 

 by Messrs, .Sutton confirms and extends the results reached 

 by the earlier experiments at Kew and elsewheie, and gives 

 ground for the conclusion that bacterized peat is destined to 

 prove of value to horticulturists. 



'Into an account of the experiments which Messr.s. 

 Sutton and Sons are conducting with radio-active substances 

 we cannot now enter; suffice it to say that so far as those 

 experiments have yielded results it does not appear that the 

 influence of these substances is verv considerable.' 



MIXED DRESSINGS OF CYANAMIDE 



AND SUPERPHOSPHATE. 



According to the Monthlt/ Bulletin of Agriciol- 

 tund Intelligence and Plant Diseases, May 1914, 

 Mr, H, Koppeii, in Berlin, has carried out .some experi- 

 ments with the object of ascertaining the advisability 

 of mixtures of cyanamide and .stiperphosphate. 



Considering it from a purely theoretical point of view 

 it might be expected that, both bodies being very suscepti- 

 ble to chemical reactions, changes might take place in their 

 chemical compositions. 



With regard to the nitrogen, the experiments have 

 demonstrated that mixing the two fertilizers does not 

 decrease the active form of this element. With the phos- 

 |)horic acid, however, the case is different, for it has been 

 found that in the mixture of the two artificials, the total 

 amount of water soluble phosphoric acid of the sttperphos- 

 [jhate retrogrades to the citric acid soluble form, wliich 

 means a notable decrease of the value of the superphosphate. 

 The jihosphoric acid is thus deprived of its most valuable 

 property, namely that of distributing itself over a large area, 

 and by the use of such a mixture no better distribution of 

 phosphoric acid in the soil is obtained than by the use of 

 basic slag. 



For this rea.son the writer considers that the prepar- 

 ations and use of cyanamide .superpho.sphate mixture is not 

 atlvisalile. 



A publication has just been received entitled: Baby- 

 lonian Dates for California, by T. P. Popenoe. It 

 is stated in this that the early ripening varieties of 

 dates secured by David Fairchild in 1903 have practically 

 been the making of a date growing industry in California, 

 since the best varieties from Algeria matured at a time 

 at which the crop was usually ruined by rain. This is 

 a point worth consideration in connexion with date grow- 

 in" in the West Indies. In further connexion with the subject 

 of date growing, the reader is referred to an interesting 

 article on the advantages of hand pollination which appear 

 in the Queensland Agricultural Journal for ilay and 

 June 1914. 



