CROPS AND FERTILIZERS 



produces fifty bushels of oats and one and one- 

 half tons of straw, the gross profit with oats at 

 fifty cents and straw at ten dollars would be 

 forty dollars. Allowing eighteen dollars as the 

 cost of the crop harvested, we would have a 

 net profit of twenty-two dollars. On such a 

 crop no man would think, of spending more than 

 five dollars for fertilizer. On the other hand, 

 on an acre of strawberries fetching three hun- 

 dred dollars or four hundred dollars gross, he 

 could well afford to spend fifty dollars or even 

 more for fertilizer. 



The thought of mixing one's own fertilizer 

 seems to the uninitiated a Herculean task. It 

 is, however, a simple matter and well worth 

 doing, as it saves expense and assures better re- 

 sults; for by simply ordering the different in- 

 gredients of a fertilizer formula one can be 

 quite sure of getting just the right proportions 

 of each constituent. 



Different fruits, vegetables, and grains re- 

 quire, of course, different proportions of the 

 three principal elements of plant food. For 

 example, corn requires more phosphoric acid 

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