16 INTRODUCTION. 



never had the advantages of a scientific training have been taught to understand 

 what is necessary in a good fertilizer, and are rapidly learning that they can 

 make these mixtures themselves as easily as to buy them ready mixed, and can 

 save money in so doing. Then, too, the result of the publication of the analyses 

 of commercial fertilizers has had the effect of driving from the market inferior 

 articles and of improving the general standard of the factory-made fertilizers, 

 and in States having a good and well enforced fertilizer control, the farmers are 

 now protected from rogues, and the honest manufacturers are not compelled to 

 compete with them. We have urged the home mixing of fertilizers upon our 

 farmers, not from any antagonism to the manufacturers of fertilizers, but because 

 we know that in the thoughtless purchase of ready mixed articles, growers are 

 continually buying what they do not need to buy, and getting mixtures poorly 

 adapted to their soil and crops, though they may be manufactured with perfect 

 accuracy and honesty. No one mixture will suit all parts of the same farm, or 

 all the crops grown upon it, and the farmer will thus be compelled to buy 

 various brands in order to get what he needs. But if he buys the materials and 

 mixes them to suit his soils and crops he can buy the whole in larger quantity and 

 at a lower price. The fact has more than once been demonstrated at the Experi- 

 ment Stations, that one may buy at retail the various materials that enter into a 

 commercial fertilizer, and save money from the price he would have to pay for 

 factory mixed goods. This book, being written by a farmer, for the benefit of 

 farmers, will advocate what its author believes to be the best interest of the farmer, 

 without regard to what others may think of what we write. It will, as I have 

 said, treat the subject of cropping and feeding crops from the standpoint of the 

 practical farmer in full sympathy with the work of scientific investigation. 



Having been more or less connected with the practical carrying out of Station 

 investigations in agriculture and horticulture, since the foundation of the Experi- 

 ment Stations, the author of this book has had exceptional opportunities for study 

 and observation; and these apportunities, added to his long experience as a 

 practical cultivator of the soil in farm, garden and greenhouse, enables him to 

 write with some confidence for the benefit of those who, like him, are endeavoring 

 to win bread from the soil. The original design was simply to make the work a 

 reference book on the use of fertilizers for the general farmer. But it is difficult 

 to write of the use of fertilizers without going somewhat into details of cultural 

 methods; and then, too, the market gardener, the orchardist, the florist and the 

 winter forcer of products under glass, are all interested in the use of commercial 

 fertilizers. Hence the idea of the work has grown so as to include some of the 

 work of each, and our hope is that all will find it a valuable book of reference. 

 So far as the garden crops and the work under glass are concerned, special 

 attention is paid to the needs of the market gardeners of the South Atlantic 

 and Southern States, since the work of the gardener in the North will be more 

 fully discussed by those actually engaged in the business there. 



