112 
Some thirty-five years ago the winter wheat growers of the Ohio Vai- 
ley began to use fertilizers, most of the material being the side products 
of the packing houses, mainly bone meal. Very profitable results were 
secured and the trade rapidly increased. In time acidulated goods were 
introduced, often being mixtures of equal parts of acid phosphate and 
bone. Later came the “complete” fertilizer, being ammonia 2, available 
phosphoric acid 8, and potash 2 per cent. This is still the so-called basal 
formula, that is, the one used as a starting point in calculating the trade 
value of goods with different formulas. About two-thirds of the fertilizer 
used in that section consist of complete fertilizer; the use of bone and aim- 
moniated phosphate is declining and the use of mixtures of acid phosphate 
and potash is rapidly increasing. Common applications for wheat are from 
one to two hundred pounds per acre, and it is almost invariably applied 
with a fertilizer attachment at the same time the seed is sown. The 
efficiency of the fertilizer in securing a stand of clover, the seed of which 
is sown before the wheat starts its spring growth, is a point to which the 
farmers attach considerable importance and the increase in clover pro- 
duction may in part account for the reduction in the amount of nitrogen 
in the fertilizers now used as compared with that used at an earlier period. 
The use of fertilizers gradually extend to other crops, but fully two 
thirds of the fertilizer sold in the Ohio Valley are used on winter wheat. 
The general tendency in composition has been to reduce the nitrogen and 
increase the potash, while the phosphoric acid has remained practically 
unchanged. Ready mixed brands are the rule, home mixing the rare 
exception. 
It is, however, unnecessary to state that much of this plant food 
has been used in a most haphazard way and that both buyer and local 
seller knew little about the composition of the goods sold or their fitness 
for the crop or soil on which they were to be used. 
The one thing which stood out very clearly was that they paid; that 
by their use good crops of wheat could be secured where unprofitable 
crops grew before; and that a stand of clover or grass could be secured, 
a suitable rotation of crops established and maintained, and that the cost 
of the fertilizer was returned many fold in the increase of wheat grain 
alone. Ten pounds of fertilizer costing from ten to fifteen cents produced 
on the average an increase of a bushel of wheat. This condition exists 
over much of the winter wheat belt extending from Kansas east and com- 
