ARTIFICIAL MANURES IN THE GARDEN. 
471 
extensive and very green, the shoots will be long-jointed and 
soft, the buds will be wood and not fruit buds, the development 
of fruit will be displaced in favour of continued growth. 
Of course for some vegetables it may be an advantage to 
promote this excessive vegetative development by the use of 
nitrogen, particularly in early spring, when the plant naturally 
finds a difficulty in obtaining supplies of nitrogen from the soil. 
For early crops of Cabbages, Lettuces, Peas, &c., top-dressings of 
nitrate of soda are a great help to rapid growth and its natural 
accompaniment of tenderness. Nitrogenous manures differ much 
in their rapidity of action : two of them, sulphate of ammonia 
and especially nitrate of soda, are both extremely concentrated 
and immediately active ; they should only be applied when the 
plant is growing, and several times in small quantities rather 
than in one application. Of course they are only partial manures, 
supplying but one element of plant food, and must not be used 
unless the land is well stocked from other sources with phosphates 
and potash, or else their continued application will result in 
the impoverishment of the soil. But in their place, and used 
with discretion, they are among the most powerful agents the 
gardener possesses. 
It is, however, among the phosphates that the gardener will 
find his most useful manures. Speaking generally, a garden receives 
lavish supplies of dung, on the whole a nitrogenous manure, 
and is somewhat over-rich on this side, if we may judge at least 
from the prevalence of wood and unfruitful growth among the 
fruit trees of so many gardens. It is in such places, the ordinary 
garden which has long been receiving dung, that phosphates and 
little artificial manure besides, are wanted to promote a better 
development of flower and fruit. 
Phosphates are intimately connected with the various 
phenomena of reproduction, which we may sum up as the 
maturity of the plant. Above all they are required to balance 
and bring to a term the growth induced by free supplies of 
nitrogen. 
Of these bodies nothing is better for general garden use than 
one of the bone phosphates, bone meal (or, better still, steamed 
bone flour, as being a finer and more soluble powder), or again 
one of the cheap phosphatic guanos. 
Basic slag is a most excellent phosphatic manure for stiff 
