22 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



small percentages will furnish, for most crops, all the mineral 

 elements needed for some years. 



For berries and tomatoes, more potash will brighten the 

 color and make firmer the fruit of the first, and render that of 

 the latter less liable to rot. For these two the New Orleans 

 complete fertilizer, with some potash, and its nitrogen in the 

 form of nitrate of soda, gave me excellent results, but for a 

 cheap and valuable all-round manure for general crops and 

 fruit trees, cotton-seed meal heads the list for new lands. 



That ammonia is the element of all others most needed in 

 this section was plainly demonstrated by the snow last winter. 

 While the mineral constituents are fixed in the earth, nitro- 

 gen in the form of ammonia is continually escaping into the 

 air by the action of fermentation and decay, and constantly 

 being returned to the soil in rain and snow. We all know 

 that no watering wili make plants grow like rain, and the 

 snow is a still more effective ammonia catcher. The differ- 

 ence between rain and snow in this respect is that the former, 

 while it brings down ammonia, also in heavy downpours not 

 only carries off most of it in floods, but actually washes out 

 much of this very soluble element from the soil itself. Every- 

 one has noticed how, after excessive rains, even on the best 

 drained ground, plants seem to stand still. But that snow 

 came last winter after a three months' drouth, and was slowly 

 absorbed by the earth, depositing an equivalent of thousands 

 of tons of cotton-seed meal, and resulted in crops of all 

 kinds, even on fresh broken sod, that fairly astonished all the 

 older settlers. We must not delude ourselves into the belief 

 that a repetition of such a yield is likely to occur the coming 

 season on ground poorly prepared. Better trust to thorough 

 stirring and cultivation, with a judicious application of fertil- 

 izers for the most valuable crops, than another snowfall from 

 the clerk of the \veather ! 



But while ammonia is most required at first, there comes 

 the time, in a few years, when lands from which continuous 

 crops have been taken will require an addition of more of the 

 mineral elements also. No analysis will tell this as effectively 

 as the plants themselves. In fact, the great difficulty of 



