22 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



crops. What you don't get in your green crops, you do in the 

 animal waste. Plow in your green crop, and supplement it 

 with your animal waste, and you will get your nitrate of soda. 



Mr. Palmer. Then you think plowing in rye or clover and 

 applying some nitrate of soda would do the work ? 



Mr. FuLLEETON. I know it would ; 1 don't think, — I 

 know it. 



Mr. Palmek. Suppose you plow in rye ; does that have the 

 same effect as clover ? 



Mr. FuLLERTON. No ; it is not a legume. Use rye one 

 year, and the next clover or cow joeas, or something of that 

 description. 



Mr. Palmer. You don't use any fertilizer alone ? 



Mr. FuLLERTON. Exccpt for a test. I have tested it every 

 year since I have been in business, some twenty-six years. 

 I use it if they want me to try it, but buy none. When I find 

 I need it, I will buy it ; but it will be after the twenty-seven 

 thousand years have gone by. 



Mr. W. C. Jewett. How much lime do you use to an 

 acre ? 



Mr. FuLLEETON. I have never found that more than 800 

 pounds was necessary. You can always tell whether lime is 

 needed, by use of the litmus paper. I sometimes forget my 

 money, and often my watch, but never my litmus paper. Half 

 the failures with crops are because the grower did not know 

 the condition his soil was in. Way back in the time of Cato, 

 who wrote one hundred and seventy-five years before Christ, 

 and Crescenzi, thirteen hundred years after Christ, they knew 

 that they must sweeten their soil with lime. They knew also 

 that by plowing in a green crop, particularly the legumes, they 

 could raise any crop they had. There are only two plants I 

 know of that will thrive on a sour soil, and they are rasp- 

 berries and Lima beans ; and I believe they will fail, in time. 



Speaking again of chemical fertilizers, I have never han- 

 dled them, and never intend to. If I wanted to get a quick 

 crop, I should use nitrate of soda; but I should not let the 

 hired man apply it, for I have seen more crops killed by the 

 careless use of that strong chemical than by anything else. 

 And put it where the plants can get at it easily; there is no 



