THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



27 



FERTILIZERS 



How to Buy Fertilizers 



THE simplest and easiest way for any one 

 to solve the fertilizer problem from 

 the gardening point of view is to buy a bag 

 of ready-mixed fertilizers, and thousands of 

 people do this every year. It is not, how- 

 ever, the intelligent nor the economical way. 

 Economy, however, does not cut as much cf 

 a figure in the small home garden as in farm 

 operations or in professional fruit and vege- 

 table gardening. We spend more than fifty 

 million dollars a year on fertilizers, but at a 

 rough guess it is doubtful whether the fer- 

 tilizers bought for home and garden use 

 would amount to more than a million or two. 



If I had only five dollars to spend on my 

 garden this year, I think I should put four of it 

 into fertilizers and one into seeds and plants. 

 The reason why the general run of gardens 

 in this country have only ordinary success 

 is that a person commonly thinks first of the 

 plants that he wants to eat, while the needs 

 of the soil come afterward. Year after year 

 I make the same old mistake of buying a 

 great variety of seeds, most of which are 

 forgotten in the spring rush, or if I get the 

 rare things planted the chances are that 

 they never survive, or drag out a miserable 

 existence. Every single plant in a garden 

 ought to be a success, and the only way to 

 have a successful garden is to have the soil 

 rich. There is a great deal more satisfaction 

 in having a few sturdy plants that are simply 

 bursting with health and vigor than half- 

 starved specimens of rarities and novelties. 

 Any one who reads this magazine ought not 

 to be satisfied with a garden that is simply 

 "good enough." It ought to be a very 

 good garden, .and the only way to have a 

 very good garden is to enrich the soil by 

 fertilizers or rhanures. 



While the people will go on buying ready- 

 made fertilizers till the crack of doom, the 

 man who enjoys putting intelligence into his 

 hobbies will find the fertilizer problem a 

 fascinating one. No subject under heaven 

 is more complicated or has more uncertain 

 factors. But these obstacles only add zest 

 to one's enjoyment if one goes at the matter 

 in the right spirit. When Liebig, about 

 1841, discovered the nine elements of plant 

 food, people jumped to the conclusion that 

 the only thing we should have to do would 

 be to analyze the plant and find out its 

 chemical constitution. This has been done 

 a million times, but the chemical constituents 

 of a plant will never be an absolutely safe 

 guide as to its needs, for a plant often takes 

 up more of a given element than is good for 

 it. The next great hope of humanity that 



was dashed was the assumption that a 

 chemical analysis of the soil would give an 

 infallible guide for determining what kind 

 of fertilizer to use and how much. The 

 reasons why soil analysis alone can never be 

 a perfect guide are numerous. Neither 

 method alone is entirely reliable, but both, 

 when taken together, furnish valuable hints. 



While there are nine elements of plant 

 food, and perhaps more, there are only 

 three of them that are of practical importance 

 to the planter. These are nitrogen, phos- 

 phoric acid and potash. These are the 

 elements that are usually deficient whenever 

 crops fail, and they are the costly elements to 

 replace. To these should be added lime, 

 which is also a plant food, but which, so 

 far as its food value is concerned, is nearly 

 always present in sufficient quantities. The 

 great function of lime is to make the soil 

 comfortable for the bacteria that supply ni- 

 trogen to the soil. Lime sweetens sour land, 

 and often improves the condition of the soil 

 that is not sour. It is therefore called an 

 "amendment" rather than a food. 



The only intelligent way to buy fertilizers 

 is to find out what nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 

 potash and lime are for, what forms they 

 can be purchased in, and the relative value 

 of these for general and special purposes. 

 It is commonly said that nitrogen makes 

 growth, phosphoric acid flowers, and potash 

 fruit. This is going a little too far, because 

 phosphoric acid and potash work together 

 for the formation of flowers and fruit, and 

 the experiment station people are not willing 

 to say that their functions are differentiated 

 in the manner stated above. But there is 

 no question what leafy crops need. All 

 such crops as lettuce and cabbage, of which 

 we eat the leafy parts and not the flowers or 

 seeds, require plenty of nitrogen. 



This department will discuss how to buy 

 nitrogen; how to buy phosphoric acid; how 

 to buv potash; lime, when and how to use it; 

 what special crops need; what different 

 kinds of soil need; low-grade versus high- 

 grade fertilizers; barnyard manure; cover 

 crops; ajjd in general the whole subject of 

 making the garden rich and productive. 

 The aim will be to simplify the whole subject 

 as much as possible, and the point of view 

 will be entirely that of the home, fruit, 

 vegetable and flower garden. In my library 

 there must be five or six hundred bulletins on 

 fertilizers, but of course they deal almost 

 entirely with the problems of the professional 

 farmer and horticulturist, and the scale of 

 operations is large. Hidden away in this 

 discouraging mass there are a few pamphlets 

 that will be of genuine help to the gardener. 

 It will pay every one who has a garden to 

 ask the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture for printed matter on this subject, 

 and also to write to his State experiment 

 station, specifying exactly what he wants. 

 There is no time like the winter to studv the 

 fertilizer question, nor is there any other 

 subject which we can so profitably study. 

 The way to have a better garden next year 

 is to enrich the soil as much as possible. 



Articles in this department will be written 

 by unbiased specialists. The fertilizer bus- 



iness is on about the same intellectual and 

 moral plane as patent medicines. This de- 

 partment is in full sympathy with the experi' 

 ment stations. 



PRACTICAL HINTS FOR FEBRUARY 



See what you can do about getting manure 

 for the garden. The value of manure 

 depends almost entirely upon the way it is 

 handled. If you have plenty of barnyard 

 manure, haul it out every day to the garden 

 if it is practicable, and put it on the snow. 

 The worst thing you can possibly do is to 

 leave it exposed to the rain and never turn 

 it over, because it heats quickly and most 

 of the nitrogen goes away. Whenever 

 you smell ammonia, nitrogen is being 

 wasted. Keep the manure under cover 

 and fork it over every three or four days, 

 or else haul it out every day and put 

 it where you want it to do the most good. 

 Now is the time to manure the lawn or 

 sprinkle bonemeal on the snow. 



Wilhelm Miller. 



Greenhouses Costing $ 100 to $350 



THE little greenhouse pictured in the 

 department heading is the property 

 of Mr. E. T. Harvey, of Bond Hill, 

 Ohio. Although Mr. Harvey goes to Cin- 

 cinnati daily, he manages to care for his 

 greenhouse in a half-hour each morning. 

 The house is 34 feet long and varies in width 

 from 8 to 12 feet. Such a greenhouse can 

 be built for $350. The owner adds still 

 further to its usefulness by using it as a back- 

 ground, around which he has laid out a 

 flower border 2\ feet wide. In the spring 

 this border is filled with Dutch bulbs, and in 

 the summer with greenhouse plants. 



A remarkable feature of this small green- 

 house is the number of large plants it con- 

 tains, such as large palms, a Pittosporum 

 Tobira measuring more than 5 feet across, 

 loquat, orange and lemon trees bearing 

 fruit, araucarias, azaleas, camellias. 



These are moved into the open garden 

 in the summer-time. Three large climbers 

 stay in the house all the year round, a night- 

 blooming cereus, some climbing roses, and a 

 Monstera deliciosa. 



A greenhouse costing $100 has been built 

 by a resident of Ottawa for use in an entirely 

 different way. His object was simply to 

 raise flowers and vegetables for setting out 

 in his garden, and to protect a few flowering 

 plants in the fall and spring. It is a "lean- 

 to" 15 feet wide and 20 feet long. 



