FERTILIZERS COTTON-SEED MEAL. 23 



determining the exact amount of plant food in a soluble or 

 available condition for immediate use, renders all soil analy- 

 ses of little practical value, as compared with actual experi- 

 ments that can be made by everyone for himself in a single 

 season. Whenever the tomato runs to vine and makes little 

 fruit, it is a plain call for phosphoric acid, or if the fruit rots 

 at the blossom end, it shows that potash is wanted. If the 

 strawberry leaves begin to spot considerably, and the lower 

 ones to dry up, or cabbages when half grown burn around the 

 edges and also dry up or shed their lower leaves, and particu- 

 larly when the plants assume a pale, yellowish green tinged 

 with red, after rain or cold, and fail to head well, unless there 

 is some local cause, such as bad drainage, it may be set down 

 as certain that potash is required. When this element is 

 present in abundance, cabbage leaves are always of a rich, 

 dark green. 



But there is no plant that indicates a poverty of potash 

 in the soil like the watermelon. The saying, "new ground 

 for watermelons," is as old as the hills. What I have now to 

 say pertains to all soils, but is particularly applicable to the 

 sandy land of Bolivar Point and Galveston Island. As 

 is well known, these are much lighter than the mainland, 

 and have no clay subsoil, and, consequently, little potash. 

 The main spring crop for money on these warm, early soils 

 is the watermelon, and the growers are in tribulation over 

 the gradual deterioration for several years, and almost fail- 

 ure last summer, of all the melons on old lands, although 

 well manured in the hill with rich compost. 



The trouble is what may be called the "die back." The 

 plants generally start well and make a good growth for awhile, 

 but when the melons begin to set, or perhaps are half-grown, 

 a shoot on one side will wither away and die. Then another 

 will go, and if the whole hill does not die out the vines make 

 poor growth, the melons are small and of very poor quality, 

 and the roots are alive with a minute little wriggler, known 

 as the "eel worm." While I never saw a sample of the 

 Bolivar worm, I recognized in the descriptions of him and 

 his work, an old acquaintance that I made the third year of 



