February 'M. 1909 



FEEDING THE CROPS. 



Kjtnu-ts from "The Yonst ut the Soil", 



a paper riad by William II. Howker 



before the Massachufctts llorti- 



c-ultu»-al Soi-ioty. 



"The yeast of the soil," as we shall 

 consider it, is not plant food, but low- 

 orders of life which exist in the soil 

 and but for which agricultural soils 

 would be practically barren. "The 

 yeast of the soil" is what is scienti- 

 fically known as bacteria — organisms 

 which thrive in the soil and by means 

 of which, unavailable plant food, es- 

 pecially nitrogen in the form of or- 

 ganic matter, such as stable manure 

 (leaves, stalks, etc.), is rendered 

 available. The great discoveries of 

 Hellreigel, the leading investigator 

 along this line, demonstrate that 

 higher orders of plant life are depen- 

 dent upon lower orders of life. We 

 could not profitably grow a corn or 

 potato crop unless these organisms 

 were growing at the same time in the 

 soil, or had previously existed there 

 and done their work. 



****»■** 

 In the spring of the year, when the 

 weather conditions are usually un- 

 favorable for the propagation and 

 rapid multiplication of these soil 

 "yeast plants," commercial manures 

 are found of great assistance in forc- 

 ing an early growth by supplying forms 

 of plant food which have been ren- 

 dered soluble by chemical treatment or 

 are, so to speak, predigested. and 

 ready for the crop to feed upon imme- 

 diately. Since most of our cultivated 

 crops make their chief growth in from 

 sixty to ninety days, it will be clear 

 that we must have plant food in the 

 soil that will feed the plant from be- 

 ginning to end, especially in the begin- 

 ning of the season when the bacteria 

 of the soil, owing to weather condi- 

 tions, have not gotten under way. 

 * * -i * * * * 

 In the majority of cases it is no 

 doubt cheaper and, if not better to 

 apply stable manure in its crude state, 

 directly to the soil, to cultivate it into 

 the soil and allow the bacteria to at- 

 tack it there; in short, to compost it 

 in the soil rather than beforehand. 

 In many cases it is desirable to use 

 some thoroughly composted stable 

 manure, — manure which has been 

 subjected to the bacterial process, 

 broken down, and a considerable part 

 of its crude plant food converted into 

 available forms. This, however, was 

 deemed more necessary years ago, be- 

 fore commercial manures were intro- 

 duced. Now that concentrated avail- 

 able plant food can be bought, the 

 necessity of composting manure in ad- 

 vance, is passing out. It is not only 

 a slow process, but more or less waste- 

 ful and expensive, for in the process 

 of nitrification through the bacterial 

 action, a considerable amount of am- 

 monia may be set free and wasted into 

 the atmosphere. This always takes 

 place when the compost pile is allowed 

 to "fire fang" and turn white. 



It is urged, however, by some ex- 

 perimenters that composting is de- 

 sirable in order to raise the temper- 

 ature of the manure pile to a point 

 that will destroy the foul weed seeds, 

 but is not this an expensive way to 

 destroy weed seeds, as obviously it 



HORTICULTURE 



must expose the compost to loss of 

 ammonia while also consuming time 

 and labor? Except where a very fine 

 seed bed is desired, with considerable 

 humus present, it is believed the coni- 

 Iiost heap will go out and commercial 

 manures will be used in its place for 

 forcing purposes. 



******* 

 In the matter of fine cultivation, the 

 old theory of cultivation was to kill 

 not only the weeds, but to make the 

 soil light and friable, to admit the 

 air, to encourage the circulation of 

 moisture through the soil, and to 

 make it an acceptable medium for the 

 roots of the crop. The modern theory 

 includes the old and also recognizes 

 the necessity of making the conditions 

 as favorable as possible for the 

 growth of bacteria. Thorough culti- 

 vation also conserves the moisture ot 

 the soil by means of a fine mulch on 

 the surface, which prevents the mois- 

 ture from evaporating. 



******* 

 Formerly, the practice was to ma- 

 nure the soil in order to restore lost 

 fertility and to supply, by guess work, 

 deficiencies in the soil, as ascertained 

 by a chemical or a crop analysis of 

 the soil. This method is not now re- 

 garded as a practical solution of the 

 problem, for neither chemical analysis 

 nor the growing of crops can be re- 

 lied upon as a true guide to its en- 

 richment. The chemical analysis of 

 the soil discloses too much that is 

 misleading, and the growing, or even 

 the matured crop, too little that is con- 

 clusive. 



Modern practice teaches that it is 

 not the soil, but the crop that we 

 should first consider. In a word, we 

 have turned from the soil, which can- 

 not positively answer, full though it 

 is of life, to the living crop which 

 can; so to-day we feed the crop 

 rather than the soil. In the modern 

 sense, therefore, the farmer is a man- 

 ufacturer and the soil is his machine, 

 into which he puts plant food and 

 out of which, by the aid of nature, 

 including the bacteria and other seen 

 and unseen forces, combined with his 

 own efforts, he takes his product at 

 harvest time. If the soil machine is 

 a good one, that is. of the right tex- 

 ture and retentive of plant food, full 

 ot active nitrifying bacteria or "yeast", 

 so much the better. If it has a balance 

 of crop-producing power to its credit, 

 we seek to preserve that balance for 

 an emergenc.v, as the prudent man 

 preserves a balance in the bank in 

 case of panic. 



(To fr continued) 



Otto Katzenstein has a new vege- 

 table named Helianti, which he will 

 introduce next season and for which 

 large claims as to yield and economic 

 value are made. Watch for the ad- 

 vertisement later on, in HORTICUL- 

 TURE. 



251 



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