The Wheat Crop 193 



Fertilizers for soils of the prairies of the Dakotas the 

 C^op^^^^* wheat growers have hardly reaUzed the fact 

 that they are rapidly approaching the time 

 when they will be confronted with the same need for fer- 

 tilizing the soil that the Eastern wheat growers have found. 



In fact, the investigations of the experiment stations in 

 that section of the country have shown that the productive 

 capacity of the soil has ahready been greatly decreased by 

 the practice of growing wheat continuously, and already 

 the winter wheat growers in the Middle States have, 

 through better systems of farming, increased the produc- 

 tion of wheat on their old lands to more than double the 

 crop that the Dakotas average. 



But in the older states there has been one bad effect 

 from the work of the experiment stations. These stations 

 have studied so much the manurial requirements of the 

 soil and the crops grown, and have devised so many for- 

 mulas for the mixing of artificial fertilizers suited to various 

 crops, that farmers, especially in the Southern States, have 

 come to the conclusion that for every crop planted they 

 must have a specially devised formula of a fertilizer. 

 They have treated commercial fertihzers simply as a 

 means for increasing the immediate crop to which they 

 are applied, instead of showing how the productiveness of 

 the soil may be maintained and increased through a 

 proper use of some of the forms of concentrated plant 

 food known as commercial fertilizers, and the farmer be 

 saved from buying what he does not need to buy. 



We have for many years been trying to impress upon 

 the wheat farmers and the cotton farmers the fact that 

 where the farm is worked in a short rotation, and legume 



