XIII 



FERTILIZING AND FERTILIZERS 



IT is astonishing that such a measure of good luck 

 attends the guesses which most of us make at 

 supplying the needs of the soil — or, to be more exact, 

 the needs of the plants which grow in the soil — because 

 very few really know anything about it. But of course 

 the makers of commercial fertihzers have helped us 

 greatly, and there are many, scientifically compounded 

 and of real value, upon the market, every pound 

 accompanied with directions for its application to the 

 soil. What these compounds do, however, and why 

 they do it, and why it needs doing, are details of the 

 matter that even very advanced gardeners do not 

 trouble to concern themselves with — at least not often. 

 The general idea is to make the soil ^'rich," and if one 

 thing doesn't produce a crop luxuriant enough to 

 indicate that this has been accomplished, something 

 else is tried — something that is hit upon somehow, 

 somewhere, that somebody says is good because it 

 has benefited some other garden. 



Of course everybody knows that the growth of a 

 plant requires food just as much as the growth of a 



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