SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 369 







from his investment in fertilizers, will soon find that he does not get as good 

 results from the same application of fertilizers which his neighbor does who 

 follows his truck with legumes, and feeds stock and makes manure at home. 

 He uses up the moisture-retaining humus in his soil, and the chemical fer- 

 tilizers are not dissolved as readily should drought intervene, as they are 

 in the soil on which legumes have been grown and stable manure applied. 



26. Not only will it be found important in the market garden to follow 

 the early crops with some recuperative one, but it will also be found fully as 

 important to follow a well settled rotation of the garden crops themselves. 

 The diseases, especially those of a bacterial origin, that attack certain crops, 

 infect the soil at times so that the same crop coming on the land, or a crop 

 of near relationship, will be more seriously affected than in the first place. 

 Tomatoes, egg plants and Irish potatoes should not follow on the same land, 

 but should be kept as wide apart as possible, since they are all affected by the 

 same diseases. No matter how heavily you manure it seldom pays to culti- 

 vate the same land year after year in the same, or a nearly related crop. 



27. The market gardener, far more than the general farmer, needs to 

 practice the home mixing of fertilizers, because the factory mixed articles 

 are seldom mixed in the proper proportion for his use, and the manurial 

 requirements of his crops vary to a greater extent than those of the general 

 farmer. He will find, too, that a rotation in fertilizers will often produce as 

 good results as a rotation in crops. In the lavish use of fertilizers in the 

 market garden certain forms of plant food, like the phosphoric acid and 

 potash, may accumulate in the soil, and there may be no need for awhile of 

 such heavy applications of these. Then a rotation with stable manure and 

 barn yard manures, in which the nitrogenous constituents are far in excess of 

 the mineral constituents, will be found a valuable change. 



28. In the home garden, where almost every one relies upon stable man- 

 ure and where little attention is generally given to a proper rotation of crops, 

 the soil often gets soured through the accumulation of humic acids, and a 

 good application of lime during the winter, followed in the spring by a 

 generous application of superphosphate and potash, will renew the life of the 

 garden and give far better crops than a continued application of stable 

 manure. We often hear people say that their gardens are so rich that they 

 cannot grow potatoes, as they run to vines. It is not excessive fertility which 

 causes this, but an unbalanced fertility, an excess of nitrogen and a deficiency 

 of phosphoric acid and potash. Add these, and the garden which was too 

 rich for potatoes will astonish you with its product. A garden which has for 

 many years been manured annually from the stables is the place of all 

 others where the commercial fertilizers will produce their best effect, and a 



