2 I 2 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
March 23 
BALANCED PLANT FOOD. 
Part VI. 
Wood Ashes and Bone. 
By comparison, the potash in muriate 
is like second class or “ cooking” butter. 
You might make it go in a sandwich if 
you put on lots of mustard, but you 
would run the risk of losing trade by 
doing it. The potash in kainit, and 
other forms, is like lard or suet. We 
have seen men smear lard over rye 
bread, and eat it with great pleasure. 
Other people would be made sick by such 
a sandwich. Asparagus might give per¬ 
fect shoots from a heavy dose of kainit 
or sylvinit, while the same form of pot¬ 
ash might ruin a tobacco crop, or reduce 
the sugar in beets by 25 per cent, or give 
a lot of “soggy” potatoes. The sulphate 
and the ashes give superior quality to 
starch-producing plants. That is their 
only superiority. The other forms of 
potash are just as soluble, and are much 
cheaper. With these facts in mind, you 
can buy the butter (potash) for your 
plants, by comparing prices per ton with 
the amount of actual potash in each 
kind. For example, in our table, sup¬ 
pose that wood ashes cost $10 a ton, and 
muriate of potash $45. That makes the 
potash in the ashes cost nine cents a 
pound, and that in the muriate 4% cents. 
The potash in the ashes is worth one 
cent a pound more, and the phosphoric 
add in the ashes is worth something, 
bat in any event, you will see that for 
crops like grass or grain, or for most 
fruits, potash costs less in muriate than 
in ashes, and in nine cases out of ten, 
will be just as effective. 
We have just had a letter from a man 
who wishes to know whether it is prob¬ 
able that he can raise a big crop of corn 
by using potash alone. You can see how 
impossible it is to answer any such ques¬ 
tion. A man can't make a sandwich 
out of pure butter. He must make sure 
of his bread and meat too. Potash is 
only one of three essential elements, and 
unless a farmer knows that his soil con¬ 
tains plenty of available nitrogen and 
phosphoric acid, he would better feed 
the complete sandwich. To make that 
sandwich for fruits, grain or grass, we 
would use, by weight, about two parts 
of wood ashes to one part of line bone. 
Now three parts of bone to one of muriate 
of potash, will give a less bulky sand¬ 
wich for these crops, but one containing 
about the same amount of plant food. 
There is the first comparison for you to 
make as to cost at your farm. And now, 
while we are speaking of this need of all 
three elements of fertility, and the 
peculiar place each occupies in the plant's 
make-up, let us read this note from a 
Kentucky farmer. Perhaps it will make 
the difference clearer still : 
Field Analysis of Soil. 
A farmer walked over his wheat field to see from 
the growth of the wheat, what kind of a fertilizer 
each part of the field might need. Where he found 
the wheat small, yellow, stalk bard and slow of 
growth, he said, “I will put here, next year, stable 
manure, nitrate of soda; or, if I buy for it a com¬ 
plete fertilizer, it must grade high in nitrogen or 
ammonia.” Where he found that the wheat looked 
a dark green, grew fast and tall, and lodged at its 
heaviest stage, he said, “ There is too much nitro¬ 
gen and too little potash here. I will put here for 
the next wheat crop, hard-wood ashes, kainit, or 
A farm of 420 acres, having 12,000 fruit 
trees—apples, pears, peaches, cherries 
planted five years ago, can be bought this 
winter at a low price. The farm nearly 
adjoins the city of Chillicothe, O., lies on 
fine rolling land well adapted to fruit 
culture and stock raising. The owner 
died and the land came into the hands of 
a corporation whose business is not farm¬ 
ing or fruit growing. It is a fine oppor¬ 
tunity for the right man. For full in¬ 
formation address A. C. Houghton, 81 
Wheeler Building, Columbus, O.— Adv. 
some other potash fertilizers.” Where he found 
a good growth and height of plant, heads long 
but grain small and shriveled, he said, “ This 
ground needs phosphorus, and I will buy for it 
bone meal or superphosphate.” But where he 
found the wheat plant small, sickly, very few, or 
no tillers to a stalk, heads short and grain defect¬ 
ive, he said, “ This land could profitably take a 
fertilizer that was a complete plant food.” Then 
he said that he thought it would be still better to 
give the poorest land a rotation of clover, and 
give to it the fertilizer he would have to give to the 
wheat. 
That puts before you in a simple way 
the peculiar needs of a crop as shown by 
its growth in the field. For the spot that 
needed more potash, the question arises 
—what form, of potash shall I use ? We 
know now that the wood ashes will 
supply it, and in last week’s table we 
learned how to get it in other substances. 
For wheat or clover, it would be simply 
a question as to the cost of a pound of 
potash, for one form will do as well as 
another on these crops. 
When we come to talk of phosphoric 
acid, or the bread in the sandwich, the 
problem is much harder, for here we 
find substances of different degrees of 
solubility and must consider the action 
and effects of a powerful acid. The 
forms in which we use phosphoric acid 
are as follows: 
POUNDS IN 100. 
Wood ashes. 2 
Ground bone. 20 
Dissolved phosphate rock. 12 
Dissolved bone black. 16 
Ground fish. 7 
Cotton-seed meal. 3 
Basic slag. 20 
Tankage. 10 
Some of these substances contain nitro¬ 
gen, and others potash also; but we shall 
discuss them now with reference to their 
phosphoric acid alone. We shall regard 
them as eight different kinds of bread 
and crackers made out of wheat in one 
way or another. Which shall we use, 
and why ? 
In all these substances, the phosphoric 
acid is found in the form of phosphate of 
lime. We learned what that is on page 
172—a combination of phosphorus and 
lime. What’s a superphosphate then— 
we hear lots about that ? What does 
super fine mean ? A good deal finer than 
what we call ue-ground. A superphos¬ 
phate is just a superfine phosphate— 
more finely divided than it was before. 
Liebig stated many years ago that, with 
a ton of whole bones, he could grow a 
certain crop. By crush ing them, he could 
do it with 1,000 pounds ; by grinding 
them into bone Hour, he could do it 
with 500, and by grinding them still 
finer, he could do it with 250 —but the last 
“ grinding ” must be done with an acid. 
In phosphate of lime, there is always 
one part of phosphoric acid to three 
parts of lime. Sulphuric acid is the 
blue, biting sulphur fumes (which we 
smell on-striking an old-fashioned match) 
dissolved in water. These fumes alone 
are called sulphurous acid. Now when 
the acid is put with the phosphate of 
lime, a chemical change occurs. Two 
parts of the lime immediately leave the 
phosphate , and unite with the sulphur to 
form sulphate of lime or plaster. That 
leaves one part of lime with the phos¬ 
phoric acid and the water, which forms 
the superphosphate, or a phosphate 
which dissolves in water. Think this 
out now, and remember it, because it is 
the most important thing about the use 
of substances containing phosphoric 
acid, as you will see later on. You see 
how the use of this acid is really a finer 
grinding than any machine can do, be¬ 
cause it not only divides the whole sub¬ 
stance into smaller particles, but even 
breaks up the particles themselves so 
that the little plant roots can get into 
them for food. As an illustration, take 
coal. As you break it up smaller and 
smaller, it burns out quicker; yet pound 
it as fine as you can, still the fire will 
turn it into coal ashes much finer than 
you could grind it with a machine. 
Before we refer to these eight forms 
in which phosphoric acid may be bought, 
another point must* be understood. A 
fertilizer analysis may tell us that so 
much is soluble , and so much is available. 
What does that mean ? We see from the 
nature of a superphosphate, that it must 
be soluble, since the water of the acid 
surrounds it. Sugar and salt are soluble, 
because they dissolve and spread all 
through water. Soluble phosphoric acid, 
then, means that the original phosphate 
has been treated with the acid. 
What does available mean, then? Here 
comes one of the most interesting things 
about it. You drop a handful of salt 
into a gallon of water, and it dissolves 
and scatters all over the water—every 
part of it being equally salty to the 
taste. Pour that over a bucket of bran, 
and the salty water will soak down all 
through it until every part of the bran 
will have its share. You couldn’t get 
any such perfect mixture by putting a 
handful of dry salt in and mixing it with 
a stick. The water carries it about far 
more thoroughly than you can. In the 
same way the water carries the dissolved 
phosphate all through the soil distribut¬ 
ing it everywhere for the plant roots to 
take up. Then, of course, it is washed 
out into the wells, brooks and ditches, 
and lost ? No, for, as we have told you, 
the soil is filled with lime. The super¬ 
phosphate was made by taking out of 
the phosphate, two parts of lime. Now 
see what happens. As the water carries 
the soluble phosphoric acid through the 
soil, it meets lime, and a chemical 
change takes place. One more part of 
lime unites with the phosphoric acid, 
and it becomes a solid again which plain 
water cannot dissolve. It is safe in the 
soil, therefore, because water cannot 
dissolve and wash it out; yet it is avail¬ 
able , because the roots of the plant can 
use it as the root acids, and those in the 
soil can slowly dissolve it. 
£Ui£ccUancou,$ ^drrrtbinn. 
Saved His Life 
—by a fortunate dis¬ 
covery in the nick of 
time. Hundreds of 
persons suffering 
from consumption 
have had the pro¬ 
gress of the disease 
stopped, and have 
been brought back to 
life and health by the 
‘Golden Medical 
\ Discovery 1 ' of Dr. 
Pierce. 
Years ago Dr. R. V. Pierce, now chief 
consulting physician to the Invalids’ Hotel 
and Surgical Institute of Buffalo, N. Y., 
recognizing the fact that consumption was 
essentially a germ disease, and that a rem¬ 
edy which would drive the germs and their 
poisons from the blood would cure consump¬ 
tion, at last found a medicine which cured, 98 
per cent, of all cases, if taken in the earlier 
stages of the disease. 
The tissues of the lungs being irritated by 
the germs and poisons in the blood circulat¬ 
ing through them, the germs find lodgment 
there, and the lungs begin to break down. 
Soon the general health begins to fail, and 
the person feels languid, weak, faint, drowsy 
and confused. 
This is the time to take Dr. Pierce’s Gold¬ 
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and poisons from the blood, and has a sooth¬ 
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bronchitis the “Discovery” is invaluable. 
“Golden Medical Discovery” increases the 
amount and quality of the blood, thus invig¬ 
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strength after wasting diseases, as fevers 
pneumonia, grip and other debilitating af¬ 
fections. 
Jno. M. HITE, of Au¬ 
dubon, Audubon Co., la., 
says: “I took a severe 
cold which settled on my 
lungs and chest, and I 
suffered intensely with 
it. I tried several of 
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and they gave up all 
hopes of my recovery, 
ana thought I would 
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cough and spit blood 
for hours, and I was pale 
and weak. I was greatly 
discouraged when I be¬ 
gan the use of the ‘ Dis¬ 
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better. It has been five years since I took it and 
have had no return of that trouble since.” 
J. M. Hite, Esq. 
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