PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 45T 



riorate. But there is not one farmer in ten thousand who can 

 keep stock enough. The question should not be with the farmer 

 how little manure will raise a crop, but how much manure can 

 be applied with increased profit ? This may be the more impor- 

 tant in raising vegetables for the market than in raising hay or 

 corn. A gentleman in Rhode Island has actually applied 800 

 pounds of phosphates with a very good result, having raised 62-^ 

 per cent more onions than usual, besides a crop of carrots upon 

 the same ground. 



GREEN CROPS. 



There is a prevailing error of opinion concerning the manner 

 in which green crops act as a fertilizer. It is well known to you 

 that I do not believe in adding ammonia artificially to a well pre- 

 pared soil; although I do conceive it to be needful to a badly 

 prepared one, where the water requires that its solvent powers 

 should be increased. I do not believe that the plant is capable 

 of obtaining its nitrogen from any such salts ; but ammonia 

 increases the solvent power of the moisture of the soil, and the 

 plant obtains its nitrogen from the atmosphere. The action of 

 the roots of growing plants gives to water an increased powder of 

 dissolving and receiving the inorganic matter of the soil, and in 

 doing so, of changing the conditions of that inorganic matter so 

 as to render it capable of feeding a class higher than its own, 

 giving it a function it did not before possess. We all know that 

 lichens and mosses will grow upon felspar rock, and take from it 

 a supply of potash. Yet that same rock, however finely ground, 

 would not yield up to wheat an ounce of potash to the acre. Not- 

 withstanding the fact that felspar is the original source of potash 

 for plants, it cannot be assimilated by the higher classes of vege- 

 tation. Therefore we find that lower plants have the power of 

 taking up that potash from the felspar rocks and the debris of 

 those rocks ; and having been once assimilated to them, the 

 higher plants receive it from their decay and re-assimilate it. 



We may add nitrogenous material to soils, and even barn-yard 

 manures, well fermented, until the soil gets at last into such a 

 state that without alkaline assistance it refuses to yield good 

 crops. 



Clover, when grown upon a soil thoroughly under-drained and 

 subsoil plowed, is capable of percolating that soil down through 

 the disturbed subsoil. It is capable of performing that function 



