234 



FERTILIZERS FOR VEGETABLES 



fertilizer as large amounts of potash as you would if you used 

 no nitrate of soda. 



For Spinach. 



Question: What formula would you use for spinach? 



Professor Van Slyke: 1 should use practically the 

 vegetable formula 4-8-10, anywhere from six or eight hun- 

 dred pounds up. You see you cannot tell what to put on your 

 soil within several hundred pounds. You will have to be 

 governed by your previous experience or by experiments that 

 you conduct yourself. In the case of heavy, leafy crops, I 

 should put on from six hundred pounds up. 



President Greffrath: Don't you think a liberal appli- 

 cation of nitrate of soda in the early spring especially will 

 be very beneficial to a leafy crop? 



Professor Van Slyke: Yes. On any vegetable crop, as 

 far as I know, because it is generally true, that in the early 

 spring the amount of available nitrogen in the soil is less 

 than at any other time in the year, for the reason that with 

 previous cropping it has been used up, and during the fall 

 there has been some leaching. The application of nitrogen 

 which can go right to work stimulating the growth of the 

 young plant is helpful. 



For Muck Soils. 



Question: What kind of nitrogen would you recommend 

 for muck soils? 



Professor Van Slyke: Mineral nitrogen preferably, be- 

 cause you have a lot of organic matter there, and since it is 

 of a character that becomes available very slowly, you can- 

 not depend upon its becoming available in very large amount 

 in any one season. I am inclined to think that in your nitro- 

 gen application to ordinary muck soils, you should put on the 

 nitrogen very much as you would put it on a soil that does not 

 contain much nitrogen, unless you do something to make the 

 muck nitrogen available during the season by liming it or 

 some such process. 



Question: What kind of potash would you recommend 

 for a wet muck soil? 



