276 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



selling your childrens' future, and the State's degree of greatness 

 in continuous tillage. I strike the medium between the eastern 

 passive tillage and your excessive tillage. Let cover and semi- 

 cover crops follow tillage crops to take up what the tillage crops 

 induce in increased soluble plant food, and stop the too rapid soil 

 solution, especially of organic matter. This is one of the functions 

 of a good rotation. To this end, I alternate tillage, cover and half- 

 cover crops. But tillage is distinctly used as a source of my greatly 

 increased need of plant food for our New England soils. 



Thirdly. I use irrigation as a source of plant food. In times 

 of drouth, water is very much the measure of crops. I now refer 

 to irrigation as a source of plant food. All waters carry such food 

 in solution. The soil has the power of removing these materials 

 from water and appropriating them. Some 300 pounds of plant 

 food annually goes into my soil by irrigation waters. Your oppor- 

 tunities of irrigation in Missouri are greater than you dream of, 

 but I do not press the point. 



Fourthly. I use muck or vegetable matter formed under water 

 and subsequently appearing as peat and muck beds. Little of this 

 is found here. I note in passing that this material is rich in nitro- 

 gen and poor in potash and phosphoric acid. For the first time, 

 .so far as I know, I introduced the habit of using with muck those 

 two deficient minerals, and find the results encouraging. 



Fifthly. I rely on the soil robbers of the west and the south 

 for their protein foods to balance the ration of carbonacious north- 

 ern clime crops of my section and to perform the second and 

 equally valuable function of feeding my soil the nitrogen it needs. 

 On my return from the west, in looking for the cheapest source 

 of nitrogen, I found it in cotton seed meal, rather than in the fer- 

 tilizers of the markets ; so I used a car load of this feed as a manure 

 and chiefly for its nitrogen. Now a ton of rich cotton seed meal 

 contains 130 pounds of nitrogen and $5.00 worth of potash and 

 phosphoric acid. If any of you are using ordinary mixed fertilizers 

 of the markets, as some of you are beginning to do, and are dream- 

 ing of doing, you are paying, or will have to pay, 20 cents for each 

 pound of nitrogen in it, or $26 for an amount equal to the nitrogen 

 contents of a ton of cotton seed meal. This is aside from the phos- 

 phorous and potash contained in the cotton seed meal. The cow 

 takes out but about 20 per cent, of these materials, and, of course, 

 leaves 80 per cent, as offal. For thirteen years I have bought only 

 protein foods using these as one means of feeding my farm. Not 

 a ton of corn meal of the 175 tons annually bought, goes to my 



