Manures and Commercial Fertilizers 109 



with the scratch plowing of the little plow and one mule. 

 Right under the shallow plowing the soil is hard and un- 

 broken, and when the torrential rains that are common 

 in the South come, the shallow broken soil gets into a 

 creamy state, and having no vegetable matter in it to hold 

 it, it runs down hill as the only way it can go, and a gully 

 is soon formed, and the farmers find it necessary to make 

 terraces and banks of various sorts to check the waste, 

 when by a more thorough plowing and deepening of the 

 soil there would be room to hold the water and check the 

 washing, especially if vegetable growth had been turned 

 into the soil. Then they jump to the conclusion that 

 their land is getting poorer because the fertilizers applied 

 in a scanty way are only stimulants, when the fault is in 

 their management of the land and the way in which they 

 use the fertiUzers merely to squeeze a little more from the 

 soil to sell away from it. They apply a little fertilizer, 

 generally in the hill or furrow, and the crop at once uses 

 up the little supply of food and then draws further on 

 what was in the soil, and the result is that the soil Is left 

 really poorer than before. 



I have told you of the various forms of plant food that 

 are essential to plant Hfe and which must be in the soil in 

 order to make plants grow. Some of these, as I have 

 shown, are naturally in such abundance in the soil that 

 there is no need for applying them in fertihzers. But 

 there are three of the elements that are exhausted from 

 the soil in cultivation. These are nitrogen, phosphorus, 

 and potassium. I have also explained that we do not 

 use these as pure elements, but in various combinations; 

 as nitrogen in nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, 



