332 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



All of the mauured plats have produced much better yields of all the 

 crops of the rotatiou thau have the plats receiviug uo manure, the in- 

 crease in the wheat and clover yields being as great, in fact somewhat 

 greater than those of the corn to w^hicli the manure was applied. The 

 residual effect of the manure, as Avould be expected, is greater than of 

 the commercial fertilizer applied in Series I. 



Attention is called to the relatively high values placed upon the ma- 

 nures, viz., 13.25 and |3.81 per ton for the yard and stall manure, re- 

 spectivelj^, when applied at the rate of five tons per acre, and |3.43 per 

 ton for the stall manure when applied at the rate of ten tons per acre. 



These figures should not be accepted as representing manurial values 

 under all conditions. On soils abundantly supplied witli organic mat- 

 ter and available plant food or with heavy applications, the price per 

 ton w^ould be less than these figures would indicate. These data, how- 

 ever, show the value of manure under conditions prevailing in tliis ex- 

 periment and. indicate clearly the relatively high values that should be 

 placed generally on live stock manures, and should encourage farmers 

 to inaugurate systems of management Avhich will stop the excessive 

 Avaste of manurial elements which takes place on most farms todaj^ 



Although the manure used alone has given such splendid returns the 

 nuinure which has been reinforced by acid phosphate at the rate of two 

 hundred pounds per acre has given approximately twice as large re- 

 turns, i. e., the manure re-inforced with acid phosphate has produced a 

 sufficient increase to place a value of |7.00 per ton on the manure after 

 paying for the acid phosphate. The manure, of course, carries only a 

 small amount of phosphorus and evidently the lack of phosphorus is to 

 a very large extent a limiting factor on this land (as it is more or less 

 generally about the state) so that the use of phosphorus with the manure 

 is much more profitable than the use of the manure alone. 



The use of floats or raw phosphate rock is sometimes recommended as 

 a carrier of phosphorus, especially when applied with manure or plowed 

 under with a green manure crop. In this experiment the manure w liich 

 has been reinforced with the floats at the rate of two hundred pounds 

 per acre,»has made somewhat better returns than the untreated manure, 

 but not nearly as good as the manure which has been reinforced with 

 acid phosiDhate, the net value of the manure treated with floats being 

 14.68 as compared with |3.81 in the untreated manure and |7.00 for the 

 manure treated with acid phosphate. When it is desired to use tlie car- 

 rier of phosphorus as an absorbent in the stable it may be that the 

 cheaper material (floats) would prove the more satisfactory but even 

 under these conditions it probably would be better to use a still cheaper 

 absorbent, such as muck or peat, and use the acid phosphate to supply 

 the phosphorus. 



ROTATION OP CROPS AND CONTINUOUS CROPPING EXPERIMENTS. 



This experiment includes a number of three year rotations and several 

 plats devoted to the growing of the same crops continuously. The ob- 

 ject in the rotation experiment is to determine the effect of growing one 

 crop after another and the relative profit from the different crops and 

 from the different rotations. The clover is introduced in nearly all 

 these rotations as an aid in maintaining the fertility of the soil and so 

 that this experiment may represent as nearly as possible actual farm 



