42 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



potassium in the plowed soil of an acre. We have a pretty 

 good supply of potassium in our soil, but we must add phos- 

 phorus unless the soil erodes so that the subsoil keeps coming 

 to the surface ; the subsoil is just as rich in phosphorus as the top 

 soil. In one way erosion is not an unmixed evil although we 

 lose valuable organic matter from the top soil as it washes 

 away. 



I want to give 3^ou a few results that we have gotten from 

 the things that seem to be essential for restormg and re raining 

 fertility. I have in my hands the records of six years' work 

 in a county which almost adjoins yours and which no doubt 

 has some representatives here — Saline County. We applied 

 limestone to the soil. We have turned back on certain parts 

 of the field all of the farm manure we could make from the crops 

 we raised. We have grown clover and turned it under, and I 

 think you will be interested in knowing the actual records that 

 we get. 



Here, for example, is the wheat crop. As an average of 

 the four years from 1911-1914 where we did nothing to the 

 land excepting raise crops and harvest them, we got 7.6 bushels 

 of wheat to the acre. Where manure was applied for one of 

 the four years we harvested 7.9 bushels per acre. Where we 

 added ground limestone at the beginning of this work in the 

 fall of 1909, we got more clover to turn under, or more nianure 

 from the legumes and other crops to put back — instead of 7.9 

 bushels the four year average was 19.4 bushels. I want to repeat 

 that the limestone did not produce all of that in the wheat 

 yield; the limestone lielped the corn as well as the v/heat, it 

 helped the clover very greatly, thus the limestone made it pos- 

 sible to produce more manure, and in consequence, more manure 

 was applied in what we call accumulative system, a system of 

 soil improvement that gets a little better every year, with land 

 building up instead of decreasing in productive power. 



Now you dairy people are more interested, I am sure, in 

 corn for the production of ensilage and fodder and grain tlian 

 you are in wheat, although I have no doubt some wheat is 

 used in rotation for various reasons, but I am going to gi\-e >-ou 

 somewhat in detail our corn record. 



