Commercial Fertilizers for Various Crops 297 



In one of the bulletins of the Ohio Experiment Station, 

 we find the following statement in regard to their experi- 

 ments in the maintenance of fertihty and the use of 

 fertiHzers. ** While, therefore, these experiments demon- 

 strate the possibility of producing a regular and certain 

 increase in the yield of cereal crops by the use of a com- 

 plete chemical fertihzer, yet they show that if such fertil- 

 izers are to be used in Ohio in the production of cereal 

 crops with any prospect of profit and as a part of a regular 

 system of agriculture, that system must provide for the 

 accumulation in the soil of the largest possible quantity 

 of organic nitrogen, through the culture, in short rotations, 

 of plants which have the power of obtaining nitrogen from 

 sources inaccessible to the cereals." And in another of 

 their bulletins the same station added later: "At the 

 present prices of cereal crops and of fertilizing materials 

 respectively the profitable production of corn, wheat, and 

 oats upon chemical or commercial fertiUzers is a hopeless 

 undertaking, unless these crops be grown in a systematic 

 rotation with clover or a similar nitrogen-storing crop; 

 and the poorer the soil in natural fertility the smaller the 

 probability of profitable crop production by means of 

 artificial fertiUzers." 



Hence, as we have uniformly insisted, the true use of 

 the commercial fertilizers is to increase the production of 

 the humus-making and nitrogen-storing legume crops, 

 and if these are neglected the dependence of the farmer 

 on commercial fertilizers will hardly be profitable. 



Many of the experiment stations have spent years in 

 the study of the manurial needs of the various crops, and 

 have devised formulas for mixing the fertihzers for each. 



