VALUE OF SWAMP LANDS. I 



alone or together, with lime, no ear corn was made. Just as 

 we should expect, these elements of plant food increased 

 the growth of stalk, but could not complete the ear. It 

 was only when potash was added that the ear was formed. 



The potash need of corn is made very clear in this 

 bulletin. The stalks required to grow a crop of 100 bushels 

 of corn contain 52 pounds of potash while the grain contains 

 19 pounds, or 71 in all. As the stalks grow before the ears 

 are formed, they will exhaust the potash in the soil, if it is 

 deficient, so that when the ears are made there is little 

 potash left for them. The result v: 111 be small and imperfect 

 ears and poor grain. One Illinois farmer gave a good illus- 

 tration of this. His soil was a black peat 16 inches deep. 

 The experiment station used it for growing corn, and among 

 other chemicals used potash at the rate of 200 pounds 

 muriate per acre. The result was that no ear corn was 

 produced where no potash was used, while in every case 

 where potash was added,-alone or with other chemicals, 

 from 36 to 60 bushels of corn per acre were grown. The 

 owner of this farm saw how potash produced corn and he 

 was so impressed with the results that he decided to use 

 potash again. The following year he used fifty pounds of 

 muriate of potash per acre. The result was a good crop of 

 stalks but no ear corn. We can easily see the reason for 

 this. There was little or no available potash in the soil. 

 The corn crop was obliged to depend upon what was added 

 in the muriate of potash. The stalks alone required 52 

 pounds of potash to make a full growth. The fifty pounds. 



