13 



few men to present to you their experiences in conducting permanent sys- 

 tems on their t farms, to show you not only the profit but the permanency. 

 We will first near from Mr. Ray Gardner of Monmouth. [Applause.] 



MORE DOLLARS PER ACRE. 

 (Ray Gardner.) 



MB. CHAIRMAN, AND GENTLEMEN: We have found that limestone is an 

 important factor in permanent fertility, and in our community we have 

 used quite a little limestone and phosphate, possibly more than in many 

 communities. In any community one of the greatest troubles about using 

 limestone or phosphate is getting it in carload lots and having to haul it 

 from the car to save paying demurrage. We have formed a company in 

 our community and have built a warehouse, a large warehouse that will 

 hold two or three carloads of phosphate and the same amount of lime- 

 stone and anyone can go and get it any time they want to. 



Limestone, should be used pretty heavy, sometimes as heavy as four 

 tons to the acre. My experience has been in using from .one to two tons 

 to the acre. I know one ton to the acre makes a lot of difference in crops. 

 It grows a lot more clover. I had one tract of forty acres which was divided 

 into two fields, one of twenty-five acres and one of fifteen acres. It had 

 been some years since the twenty-five acres had ever been seeded and I 

 had been unable to get it to take clover. It would start, but the seasons 

 were so dry there wasn't enough nutriment in the soil to hold the plants. 

 I applied a ton of limestone on this twenty-five acres. The fifteen acres 

 had been seeded as much as three different times in its regular rotation. 

 On the twenty-five acres the red clover was much better than it was on 

 the fifteen, and there was an excellent stand of sweet clover in it from a 

 mixture of about a pound to a pound and a half to the acre. That soil 

 was sweetened in that time by one ton of limestone so that the next year 

 sweet clover managed to take the field all right. 



On another field of twenty acres I sowed oats with a mixture of about 

 a pound and a half of sweet clover. Now some may wonder why a person 

 would sow sweet clover, but I think a man's ambition on the farm should 

 be to some day reach the time when alfalfa may be seeded in the rotation. 

 That time may seem a long ways off, but it don't seem as far to me now. 

 This inoculation from seeding sweet clover scatters from one plant to 

 another and covers quite an area, and that is the reason I do it that way. 



Mr. Gardner's Sweet Clover. 

 (At rear of car one ton of limestone was applied at front no application.) 



