THE 
GARDEN YARD 242 
amount of the necessities of life that he can buy 
in return for the number of hours he has worked ; 
so the price of fertilizer must be judged by the 
amount of plant food it contains, rather than by 
the money cost per ton. That is what makes 
high-grade fertilizer really cheaper than the low 
grades which cost less money. 
For example, take the most popular of the 
$25 a ton fertilizer, “2-8-2.’’ This contains 
12 per cent. of plant food, or 240 pounds to the 
ton, made up as follows: two per cent. nitrogen, 
eight per cent. phosphoric acid, and two per 
cent. of potash. This brings the cost of this 
cheap fertilizer to 104 cents per pound of plant 
food to the ton. Now if the farmer bought a 
ton of plain muriate of potash, it would cost 
him $50 per ton, but he would get 50 per cent. 
of plant food, thus making the actual cost only 
five cents per pound of plant food, less than 
half the plant food price of “ 2-8-2.” 
Few farmers want to buy the potash sepa- 
rately, and they complain that the manufac- 
turer charges high for it in fertilizer where it is 
present in large quantities. But a little in- 
vestigation will prove that this isnot so. Take 
for example, the “2-8-10’’ grade which sells 
generally for $30 per ton. Here you have 20 
per cent., or 400 pounds, of plant food to the 
