378 STATE HOETICULTURA.L SOCIETY. 



by a number of crops are given, and the crops themselves are, cer- 

 tainly, within the reach of our farmers in good years. The crops must, 

 therefore, find this plant-food in the soil, and if larger ones are not 

 harvested on account of the absence of or difficulty in finding addi- 

 tional food supplies, fertilizers would remedy the matter easily. Doub- 

 ling the crops should be our aim, and to approach it, fertilizers suffi- 

 cient to provide for the wants of this increase should be put upon the 

 the land. If this be done, a fall response must, of course, not be ex- 

 pected the first year; the solubility of the material will spread it 

 throughout the soil, while the roots come in contact only with a limited 

 portion of it; but in the end it is taken up and utilized. Upon this 

 plan a table each for potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen will be con- 

 structed to facilitate the calculation of the farmer. 



Potash. — The accessible potash supply for this State consists of 

 wood-ashes and the products of the potash industry at Strassfurt, 

 Germany. The former are limited in amount and available only in cer- 

 tain places, and it is difficult to assign to them, on account of differ- 

 ences in their composition, any certain value ; where used as in the 

 southern part of the State, 10 per cent of potash in them may perhaps 

 be a fair average, so that 100 pounds of good, dry wood-ashes would 

 possess a manurial value of b5 cents. 



An unlimited supply of potash salts reaches us, however, from 

 Germany. The potash or German Kali works, as officially known here, 

 produce and send out a yearly increasing quantity of their valuabe 

 products, which begin to find their way to our State and to our farms. 

 Mainly four forms are imported, each containing a different but war- 

 ranted quantity of potash, which may be trusted to be correct without 

 State supervision. The four forms, together with their nominal value 

 at 5i cents per pound of actual potash, are as follows: 



Kainit, witb 12.4% of potash, $O.GS 100 pounds, $13 60 per ton. 

 Sulphate of potash, 50% of potash, $2.75 100 pounds, $55 per ton. 

 Carnallit of potash, 9.0% of potash, fO 49 lOJ pounds, $9.80 per ton. 

 Muriate of potash, 45 to 55% of potash, $2.47 to $3.02 100 pounds, $49.40 to 

 $60.60 per ton. 



Kainit may be said to be raw material from which sulphate of pot- 

 ash, as carnallit that from which muriate of , potash, are made : both raw 

 materials contain, in addition to the potash, magnesium salts and com- 

 mon or table salt, which on our soils are of some value and often prove 

 quite beneficial. The prices at which these salts sell are close to their 

 manurial value, both of which should really be identical, since manurial 

 value means the price at which the specific manurial agent can be bought 

 in open market ; but railroad freights and the cost of manufacturing the 

 crude into purer products cause the price to differ from and to usually 



