Food for PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS AS A RESULT OF 



EXPERIMENTS. 



48 



I. For Crops of High Commercial Value. 



It is well understood by all market 

 gardeners that, in their business, liberal 

 manuring must be practised, and that 

 the manures used must contain an abundance of Nitro- 

 gen, that may be quickly used by the plant, if rapidity 

 of growth and early maturity are to be attained. The 

 experiments with Nitrate of Soda were, therefore, 

 planned to show in which directions the benefits from 

 its use were observed whether, for example, in the 

 larger yield of a crop of the same general character; or 

 whether, together with the larger yield, there was an 

 earlier maturity of those crops in which early maturity 

 is an important factor; or whether the marketable qual- 

 ity was improved, thus returning a larger profit for the 

 same yield; or whether all of these factors were involved; 

 and the results showed that, as a whole, benefits were 

 obtained in all these directions. The more important 

 crops of this class were included in these experiments. 

 In the growing of this crop, whose 



Beets. value ma y ran S e from $ 300 to $ 600 



per acre, the amount of plant-food an- 

 nually applied is usually far in excess of that removed 

 in the crops of any year, in order to guarantee against 

 any shortage of food should unfavorable weather con- 

 ditions intervene; the crop must be kept growing at all 

 hazards. In good practice an application of from 

 fifteen to twenty tons of manure and about one ton of 

 a high-grade commercial fertilizer are used per acre. 

 The plants are usually grown under glass, and trans- 

 planted as soon as the land is fit to work. Hence the 

 questions asked by the experimenter were, first, 

 whether an additional application of Nitrogen in the 

 form of a Nitrate would be a profitable practice in con- 

 nection with this heavy application of all of the plant- 

 food constituents, and second, how much should be 

 used. The applications, therefore, ranged from 400 to 



