FERTILIZER REQUIREMENTS OF COTTON. 



AS DRTEKMINEU WY TllK ANAIA'^IS UF TEK PLANT. 



No question, perhaps, so nearly concerns the grower of 

 cotton as that of fertilization. The small margin for profit 

 in its cultivation makes it imperative that the southern 

 farmer, who chooses to depend well nigh exclusively on the 

 great staple for his livelihood, should cultivate it at the 

 smallest possible cost. An indiscriminate and unintelligent 

 use of fertilizers must be discarded, then, as early as possi- 

 ble, and the farmer should seek to inform himself as to what 

 his soil needs in order to make it highly productive. Much 

 that is valuable has been published on this subject, and 

 many reliable experiments performed which seem to solve 

 the question pretty effectually as far as the particular soils 

 under consideration are concerned. By the application of 

 various fertilizers in varying proportions the experimenter 

 has been able to say that his soil needs this and that con- 

 stituent in this and that amount, but he solves the question 

 with any great degree of certainty onlij with reference to 

 his own soil and those which resemble it in kind and climatic 

 conditions. What is needed in South Carolina or Texas, 

 for instance, may not be needed in Alabama, and what an 

 east Alabama soil may be deficient in, may be found in suffi- 

 ciency in a western Alabama soil. The great desideratum, 

 therefore, is to fiud some method of determining soil re- 

 quirements which admits of general application, or which 

 may be readily and cheaply applied in individual cases. 

 With the hope of being able, if possible, to make some small 

 contribution toward the solution of this great problem, the 

 work detailed in this bulletin was undertaken. 



