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be carefully examined upon their potash (kali) requirements 

 before deciding upon regular potash (kali) fertilization; 

 but care is to be taken not to be deceived by the examina- 

 tion. How easy it is to be deceived, an example will 

 illustrate. 



Suppose two farmers have the same soil and both deter- 

 mine to prove by an experiment whether the soil requires 

 potash (kali). Farmer A applies ninety pounds per acre 

 and chooses barley as the plant to* make the experiment 

 on. Farmer B uses the same quantity of potash (kali) 

 but chooses turnips. How much should the yield be in- 

 creased in each case? We suppose that one-half of the 

 potash (kali) application, that is to say forty-five pounds, 

 should be contained in the harvest product, and that a 

 supply of forty-five pounds was already in the soil. This 

 is easy to calculate. For the production of an average 

 barley crop, there are required per acre forty-five pounds, 

 of potash (kali), and for the production of an average crop 

 of turnips about 226 pounds of potash (kali). For the barley 

 requirement the quantity of potash (kali) has been doubled, 

 but on the beet-field only J/6 has been added of what the 

 -crop requires. Farmer A finds the yield of barley doubled, 

 and considers his soil very much in need of potash (kali) ; 

 farmer B is hardly able to see any result, and believes his 

 soil does not require potash (kali). Yet, as a matter of 

 fact, the potash (kali) requirement of the soil is necessarily 

 the same, only the plant requirement differing. It became 

 quite evident in the one case and not so in the other. 

 Meadows are to be considered as pre-eminently requiring pot- 

 ash (kali), and as paying well fpr its application. Meadows, 

 as a rule, have lost much more of phosphoric acid and 

 potash (kali) than has been returned to them by manure, 

 and the yield of meadows are considerably below what 

 they might be if properly fertilized with phosphates and 

 potash (kali), as has been proven in recent years in a 

 final manner. 



Nitrogen fertilization on meadows is unnecessary. The 

 meadow should not live on the nitrogen of the soil, because 

 it should enrich the farm by catching the nitrogen of the 

 air and transforming it into stable-manure nitrogen. That 



