40 — How to Make the Garden Pay. 



$$0, expense of handling and application included. Many after 

 having tried a one-half ton application find fault if the results do 

 not give as good a showing as a ^150 application of compost. 

 This is not common sense. 



Soils that have been utilized for the production of garden 

 crops for many years, and are yet filled with humus from previous 

 applications of compost, usually contain considerable potash and 

 phosphoric acid, which elements of plant food, in these heavy 

 dressings of yard manure, are always applied greatly in excess of 

 the needs of crops, and permitted to accumulate in the soil. The 

 nitrogen alone, however, is taken up by the plants, or leached 

 out of the soil as fast as rendered available. When we consider 

 that nitrogen is the chief generator of stalk and leaf, and promoter 

 of rapid and succulent growth, and that the conversion of unavail- 

 able forms of nitrogen into available nitrates (the so-called 

 nitrification) is exceedingly slow in the early (cooler) part of 

 spring, we have the explanation of the effectiveness of a manure 

 application holding 400 lbs. of the most important substance of 

 plant nutriment, and of the often comparatively meagre results 

 obtained from a dressing of fertilizer having only one-quarter or 

 less of that quantity of nitrogen. Bone meal, although rich in 

 phosphoric acid, which is not superabundant in stable manure, 

 and therefore frequently used in alternation with the former, gen- 

 erally with excellent results, has the same scanty supply of 

 nitrogen as the high-grade complete fertilizers. This nitrogen in 

 commercial fertilizers, however, is generally in a more readily 

 available form than that in yard manure ; and, all points taken in 

 consideration, a rotation of the several manures should be adopted 

 as it has proved far preferable to the exclusive or continued use 

 of one or the other of them alone. The heavy tax that the 

 demands of the crops impose upon the gardener can often be 

 materially lightened in this way. 



Some of our best gardeners go much further. They use 

 what stable manure is made on the place, and put all the money 

 to be expended for manures in complete commercial fertilizers, 

 and nitrates (spoken of in next chapter). I have grown excellent 

 vegetables of all kinds on poor soil by this^system of feeding the 

 crops ; but I miss the quickening and loosening effect upon the 

 soil which is found in an occasional ration of compost. Hence 

 I prefer the rotation system of manuring, and if for some reason 

 it should become necessary or unavoidable to use commercial 

 fertilizers uninterruptedly, I would at least grow and plow under 

 an occasional green crop, such as clover, black peas or southern 

 cow beans, peas, weeds, etc., merely for the purpose of adding 

 decaying vegetable matter to the soil, and thus opening it to the 

 ingress of air and moisture. Its state of concentration fits the 

 commercial fertilizer especially for application to growing crops, 



