FOOD FOR PLANTS 35 



Many fertilizer formulas have been recommended, 

 and by all kinds of authority, and green manuring is 

 widely advised as a means of helping to get a supply 

 of cheap Nitrogen; but, with this crop especially, 

 cheap forms of Nitrogen are very dear. 



Report on Alabama Cotton Prize Experiments 

 with Chemical Fertilizers. 



Extended experiments have been made from year 

 to year by all the Experiment Stations in the various 

 cotton-growing states with a view to arriving at the 

 fertilizer requirements of the cotton plant under the 

 varying conditions of soil and climate which are met 

 with throughout the cotton belt, and the needs of 

 the plant for the various essential fertilizing elements 

 have been determined with comparative accuracy. 



Many of the formulas for cotton and corn which 

 are in use throughout the cotton-growing states 

 supply proportions of Nitrogen, and, in some cases, 

 of potash, which are far below the fertilizer require- 

 ments of the crop, while as before stated little atten- 

 tion is given to the matter of supplying these ele- 

 ments in forms most available for the needs of the 

 plant. 



Analyses of the cotton piant, made at the South 

 Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama Experiment Sta- 

 tions, show the needs of the plant for liberal supplies 

 of Nitrogen and of potash, particularly of the former 

 element, since our average cotton soils are, as a rule, 

 so poorly supplied with it. 



At the Alabama Experiment Station in 1899 (Bul- 

 letin 107), analyses were made of all portions of the 



