228 The Canadian Horticulturist 



that they have had any kind and indulgent benefactor. Here chalk is of excel- 

 lent use to drive away such ingratityde, having a retentive quality to enclose 

 and stay the salts.' 



" It needs to be borne in mind that potash or soda lye binds a clay soil, 

 making it heavier, more tenacious and cloddy than before, and it may be that 

 on this account a heavy application of unkached ashes to a clay soil would 

 either not help it at all or even damage it, while on light soils unleached ashes 

 would be more beneficial than leached ashes. This favorable action on light 

 soils has made ashes popular in this State, where our soil is for the most part 

 light and sandy. They ' keep the soil moist ' as the saying is, that is by filling 

 up the pores and compacting it, the soil water is made to rise more readily in it 

 from the subsoil, bringing plant food with it and preventing drought. 



" Besides this action of ashes which is in large part at least mechanical, 

 they also tend to correct ' sourness ' of the soil. In most cases this is not due 

 to free acid, but to the presence of soluble iron salts, which in undue quantity 

 are poisonous to plants, and in smaller quantity show that the soil is stagnant, 

 and needs aeration. Ashes precipitate these salts and opens the soil that con- 

 tains them to the air, by making it looser in texture. 



" When potash salts have been used in large quantities and the potash has 

 been largely taken up by a rapidly growing crop, as tobacco, leaving most of the 

 acid with which the potash was combined in the soil, ashes or lime may profit- 

 ably be used to neutralize it. Our best tobacco growers use stone lime or 

 cotton hull ashes largely on their tobacco land, with excellent results. 



" A third way in which ashes benefit land is in promoting nitrification ; 

 that process by which the more or less inert nitrogenous matters in the soil are 

 made to yield nitrates, from which our field crops obtain most, if not all, their 

 nitrogen supply. This process is in some way connected with the life of low 

 organisms, which are invariably present in fertile soils. Nitric acid can only be 

 produced, however, when carbonate of lime is present to supply a base with 

 which the acid may combine, and a soil mildly alkaline is the one most favor- 

 able to the growth of these organisms and the formation of nitrates. 



" Such is, in brief, our present knowlege regarding the action of ashes. It 

 is clear that the quantities of potash and phosphoric acid present do not wholly 

 measure the value of ashes, nor does it pay to buy them simply to supply a 

 deficiency of these two things in the manure. The quantities of potash and 

 phosphoric acid in a ton of ashes costing $12 to $15, can be bought in the form 

 of muriate of potash and superphosphate of lime for $8 or $9. But ashes tem- 

 per certain soils, making them easier to work, moister, and more retentive of 

 manure, correcting ' sourness,' promoting the solution of plant food in them, 

 and so preparing the way for the use of fertilizers, which, directly applied, might 

 be wasted. To accomplish these ends, ashes have to be used in considerable 

 quantity, and probably a single heavy dose would help more than the same 

 quantity applied in fractions, through three or four successive years, if the 

 object is to change the mechanical condition of the soil strikingly." 



