FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION 55 



to raw phosphate. So after a few weeks or months there is not 

 so much soluble phosphorus as before, but when spread on the 

 land the decomposition of those bacterial bodies takes place rap- 

 idty, and the phosphorus is again made soluble and available for 

 plant growth. 



I want to call your attention to the fact that there are some 

 abnormal soils and some of you may be interested in those soils. 

 Manure is not always the best fertilizer. Take for instance, 

 peaty swamp land. Those lands are made from partial decom- 

 position of mosses and reeds and coarse grasses and things of 

 that sort growing in stagnant water, which fall down in ponds 

 and finally filled them up, and when they are finally dead and 

 partly decayed you have this peat or muck. That has no rela- 

 tion to the rocks from which ordinary soils are made. Peat soil 

 is very poor in potash and it will not grow crops very long with- 

 out the addition of potassium. It is not a waste of farm manure 

 to put it there to supply potassium, but it is not the best use of 

 it providing you have other land. Nitrogen is the most valuable 

 constituent of manure, but these peat lands are as rich in nitro- 

 gen as manure itself, and it is a pure waste to put manure there 

 to supply nitrogen. But your manure may be very important 

 for other land for nitrogen, phosphorus, and for organic matter. 

 The one thing that will benefit peat land is potash or potassium, 

 but at the present time, with the practical impossibility of secur- 

 ing potash because of the war in Germany, we can only advise 

 farmers farming peat lands to use manure on it because they 

 cannot get potash. But I should say a farmer under ordinary 

 conditions would better put manure on other lands and buy pot- 

 ash for his peat lands. 



In Alason County we conducted some investigations with 

 the addition of potassium to muck soil. As an average of three 

 trials each year, the addition of potassium gave an increase of 

 crops of 20.7 bushels per acre the first year, 23.5 the next year 

 and 29 bushels the third year where potassium was added than 

 where not. The fourth year there was 36.8 bushels more corn. 

 You know that peat land gets down to where they don't grow 

 much corn after awhile unless potassium is applied. We tried 



