FERTILIZERS AND 
but try to grow a cover crop of rye after the harvesting 
of the roots. The rye is plowed under, making an ex- 
cellent "green manure" supplying a great deal of hu- 
mus. Dahlias are grown on the same fields year after 
year with no other fertilizing. 
It is very easy to make the soil too rich for dahlias. 
In fact, any good garden or farm soil is just right for 
dahlias as it is, without the addition of any fertilizer 
except bone meal. The stimulation of manures or 
commercial fertilizers may be given after the plants 
have begun their tremendous labor of profuse flower 
production, but not before. Inasmuch as bone meal 
is not immediately available as plant food, requiring 
at least thirteen weeks to decompose in contact with 
the soil, and since it does not unduly stimulate foliage 
and rankness of growth, it is advisable to put in into 
the soil when the tubers are planted, or in the autumn. 
Excess of plant food rich in nitrogen promotes a vigor- 
ous, but soft and leafy growth in any plant, with but 
few flowers. This is specially true of dahlias. With 
a vegetable organism as susceptible to variation as the 
dahlia some change of flower form and color is likely to 
occur, when too strongly stimulated with fertilizers. 
Bone meal is the ideal dahlia fertilizer. It seems 
impossible to use too much of it, or to do harm with it. 
It can be broadcast upon the soil, 1 000 pounds to the 
acre being only a moderate quantity, and plowed under 
in autumn, or spring. Decomposing slowly, many 
