112 



Some thirty-five years ago the winter wheat growers of the Ohio Val- 

 ley began to use fertilizers, most of the material being the side products 

 cf the packing houses, mainly bone meal. Very profitable results were 

 secured and the trade rapidly increased. In time acidulated goods were 

 introduced, often being mixtures of equal parts of acid phosphate and 

 bone. Later came the "complete" fertilizer, being ammonia 2. available 

 phosphoric acid 8, and potash 2 per cent. This is still the so-called basal 

 formula, that is, the one used as a starting point in calculating the trade 

 value of goods with different formulas. About two-thirds of the fertilizer 

 used in that section consist of complete fertilizer; the use of bone and am- 

 moniated phosphate is declining and the use of mixtures of acid phosphate 

 and potash is rapidly increasing. Common applications for wheat are from 

 one to two hundred pounds per acre, and it is almost invariably applied 

 with a fertilizer attachment at the same time the seed is sown. The 

 efficiency of the fertilizer in securing a stand of clover, the seed of which 

 is sown before the wheat starts its spring growth, is a point to which the 

 farmers attach considerable importance and the increase in clover pro- 

 duction may in part account for the reduction in the amount of nitrogen 

 in the fertilizers now used as compared with that used at an earlier period. 



The use of fertilizers gradually extend to other crops, but fully two 

 thirds of the fertilizer sold in the Ohio Valley are used on winter wheat. 

 The general tendency in composition has been to reduce the nitrogen and 

 increase the potash, while the phosphoric acid has remained practically 

 unchanged. Ready mixed brands are the rule, home mixing the rare 

 exception. 



It is, however, unnecessary to state that much of this plant food 

 has been used in a most haphazard way and that both buyer and local 

 seller knew little about the composition of the goods sold or their fitness 

 for the crop or soil on which they were to be used. 



The one thing which stood out very clearly was that they paid; that 

 by their use good crops of wheat could be secured where unprofitable 

 crops grew before ; and that a stand of clover or grass could be secured, 

 a suitable rotation of crops established and maintained, and that the cost 

 of the fertilizer was returned many fold in the increase of wheat grain 

 alone. Ten pounds of fertilizer costing from ten to fifteen cents produced 

 on the average an increase of a bushel of wheat. This condition exists 

 over much of the winter wheat belt extending from Kansas east and com- 



