FEBRUARY: FOURTH WEEK 53 



of a 4-8-10 fertilizer at $2 a hundred than it is to buy four 

 hundred pounds of a 2-4-5 brand at $1.60 a hundred. Not 

 only would the former lot, costing $4, contain as much 

 actual plant food as the latter, costing $6.40, but it would 

 be much easier to move it round and put it on your garden, 

 and better materials would have been used in making it. 



Saving in Home-Mixed Fertilizers 



Making your own fertilizer is not a difficult task. Ni- 

 trate of soda, dried blood, tankage and cottonseed meal 

 are all used as sources of nitrogen. Phosphoric acid may 

 be had in high grade in acid phosphate. Potash may be 

 had in muriate or sulphate of potash. All these things are 

 standard commercial products, with uniform percentages 

 of plant foods contained, and it is therefore not difficult to 

 figure out any formula you may desire to use. A mixture 

 of nitrate of soda, muriate of potash, high-grade tankage 

 and high-grade acid phosphate, in the proportions of thirty, 

 forty, fifty and seventy pounds respectively, makes a high- 

 grade complete fertihzer with an analysis approximately of 

 four per cent nitrogen, eight per cent available phosphoric 

 acid, ten per cent potash. Twenty pounds of nitrate of 

 soda, thirty pounds of Peruvian guano, forty pounds of 

 muriate or sulphate potash and eighty pounds of acid phos- 

 phate will give about the same formula. 



The operation of mixing the materials together is not a 

 difficult one. Weigh out, or estimate carefully, which will 

 answer practical purposes, the several materials; break up 

 any lumps with a mallet or the back of a shovel; spread the 

 several layers on top of one another on a tight floor or in a 

 large shallow box; mix thoroughly with a square shovel or a 

 hoe; and sift through an ordinary coal-ash sifter or a small 

 screen. If you have several hundred pounds of the mixture 

 it may be stored conveniently in cracker boxes, which hold a 

 hundred pounds each when not quite level full. Keep in a 

 dry place. 



When buying your fertilizers buy enough bone flour and 



