223 



lie said to him, "Friend, could you tell me where I may find 

 a monkey-wrench?" And the Swede shook his head and iu 

 his broken English he said, "My uncle Ole, lie keep a mule 

 ranch, and my brother, Gene, he keep a sheep ranch and I 

 keep a cow ranch, but I tink North Dakota is too tam cold 

 for a monkey ranch." (Laughter.) 



The chemists Avill collect samples of soil and analyze 

 them and say, "Here is one soil that is twice as rich as an- 

 other soil." Quantatively it may be true, actually it may 

 not be true, because the measure of soil fertility is crop pro- 

 duction, and a peat bog that contains in dry peat 2% of 

 jiitrogen, is less valuable as a soil than an upland field that 

 contains only .15% of nitrogen; so we come back again to 

 ihiH same question of the rate of the utilization of plant food, 

 nhieh may be in the soil and we want to utilize this plant 

 food as effectively as we can before we resort to the use of 

 jiurchased plant food ; but as we extract more and more from 

 the land, we come to the time when we recognize that, sup- 

 plementing natural plant food resources, is often profitable if 

 rot always profitable. 



There are many fertilizers, as you know ; the choice is 

 irom among various materials, but we can simplify the 

 ])roblem by recognizing that in so far as nitrogen is con- 

 cerned, we may be able to draw on the air for sufficient 

 ('uantities in cover crops to permit us perhaps to get along 

 without the purchase of nitrate of soda or sulphate of am- 

 monia or tankage or some of the other concentrated and 

 readily available forms of nitrogen. That will depend 

 entirely on the soil itself. 



As I said a while ago, we find it profitable in peach 

 growing to dole out nitrogen to the crop, because the soil 

 Itself lias little to offer and when our trees are so close to- 

 gether as not to allow the utilization of cover crops because 

 of the drying out of the soil by the roots and the shading of 

 the ground hy the trees, we have to resort to the use of 

 iiitrate of soda. That applies to apples and pears on the 

 lighter soil. I dare say that on heavier land we might be 



