170 Practical Farming 



tilizers combined with continuous clean culture of one 

 crop, has resulted in wasted fields, and a great waste of 

 money for what the farmer in a good rotation can get 

 without buying, the proper and liberal use of the mineral 

 forms of plant food is the most rapid and profitable 

 method for improving the condition of the soil. 



We have often urged that in any ordinary grain or cotton 

 farming the farmer who farms right will never need to buy 

 any nitrogen in any form, for the legumes will give him 

 plenty for the succeeding crop and will give him also 

 forage, which, fed to stock, will enable him to make more 

 manure at home and thus have less and less need for a 

 complete fertiHzer. But all of our older cultivated soil 

 has become deficient, from the carrying off of crops, in 

 phosphoric acid and potash, especially in phosphoric acid. 

 There is no way in which we can get these back to the 

 soil from the air as we can the nitrogen, and hence, they 

 must be restored in some artificial way. 



In recent years there has been a great deal said and 

 written about a little farm near Philadelphia where Doctor 

 Detrich made the soil so fertile that he supported thirty 

 cows, so far as hay and roughage was concerned, on less 

 than fifteen acres of land, and the soil became so fertile 

 that he not only did this but had hay to sell. Doctor 

 Detrich boasted that he used no commercial fertilizer. 



But he bought liberally of grain for the cows. This 

 grain was grown on some one else's land, and the Doctor 

 was simply transferring the fertility of other people's land 

 to his own. He had a near market for dairy products at a 

 good price and, therefore, could afford to do this. 



But there are few general farmers who can afford to buy 



