202 An American Fruit-Farm 



the ground-bone fertilizers, or in pulverized or 

 dissolved Florida or South Carolina rock. An 

 annual application of four hundred pounds to the 

 acre, or more as the soil may indicate its needs, is 

 ample. I incline to the heavier application, even 

 up to twice the amount named. Nitrogen, though 

 the most abundant element in earth and air, is 

 usually in an insoluble form. We get it from the 

 earth indirectly, through the clovers, vetches, cow- 

 peas, beans, turnips, and root-piercing crops gener- 

 ally. These absorb the available nitrogen in 

 nodules, as the clovers; or store the element in the 

 fruit, as in peas and beans, and thus make the food 

 available. A piece of hard, barren land, if sown to 

 one of the clovers and securing a good "catch," — 

 that is, the seed growing, — ^with favorable weather, 

 becomes a green field. Plow in the clover, and 

 the land by so much becomes rich and tillable loam. 

 Sometimes these plow-crops are not practicable, 

 and resort must be had to commercial fertilizers for 

 a time, in the form of animal refuse, blood, tankage, 

 and nitrate of soda. But Nature herself comes 

 to our relief. What spot does she leave barren on 

 hill, or meadow, or beach of lake? The nakedness 

 of yesterday is clothed to-day with grass and weeds 

 and creeping vines. Nature not only abhors a 

 vacuum but also barren earth. 



These foods — ^potash, nitrogen, phosphoric acid — 

 slip quickly through the earth and may wholly miss 

 the mark unless stayed in their flight, held up, as 

 it were, by humus. This delays them till the 



