Fertilization 
L. B. Skinner. 
Fertilizer is supreme—“With what 
measure ye mete it shall be measured to 
you again.” Little fertilizer, little crops, 
poor fertilizer, poor crops. Liberal fer¬ 
tilizer, liberal crops. Best grade of fer¬ 
tilizer produces best grade of crops. 
Stingy fertilizing, small crops, no re¬ 
turns, no profits, lots of debt, lots of 
waste, lots of faultfinding, lots of failure 
and disappointment. 
Generous, but careful fertilizing, makes 
generous returns, even extravagant fer¬ 
tilizing gives enormous returns if wisely 
applied. In these times we are prone to 
stint the fertilizer, but it can't be done and 
make money. 
The tree' or plant will take its main¬ 
tenance first, enough to support it. If 
there is any left over it will make profit 
for you. I know little of farming outside 
of orange* groves,; but" I judge the same 
rule to hold true everywhere. 
It takes just so much to sustain life and 
on this there is no profit directly. Beyond 
this line lies the realm of profit. If you 
would profit, withhold not your hand, put 
on all you can afford—double it and apply 
as much again. 
This does not mean that you are to 
throw a baby tree into an ocean of fertili¬ 
zer. If you do you will lose both tree and 
fertilizer. Neither does it mean, if a tree 
ask bread, for you to give it a stone, or if 
it craves nitrogen are you to feed it phos¬ 
phate rock. Or if it wants potash, to ex¬ 
pect lime to do as well. For seventy- 
five years the best minds have been blaz¬ 
ing the way of safety and profit, and put¬ 
ting up danger signs to warn us of dan¬ 
gerous practices. 
Heed no one’s “Lo, here is something 
just as good as Soluble Phosphoric Acid, 
or lo, there is something that will take the 
place of potash.” If the blind lead the 
blind both will fall into the ditch. Life 
is short—time is fleeting—you have not 
time to follow after false gods, follow the 
laws laid down as the result of half a cen¬ 
tury of careful experiments, and you and 
I have little time to experiment. Few of 
us are fitted for it—we have not the time 
or the patience, and there is no direct pro¬ 
fit in experiments. I can take no interest 
in following a line of work that I know 
is going to show why a certain method is 
a failure if I am satisfied in my mind that 
the method is a failure. If I don’t see 
success ahead my interest is gone, and so 
it is with most of us. Some of us eat to 
live and some live to eat, some work to 
produce something. Some are satisfied to 
work a whole lot just for the pleasure of 
seeing the motions made, and in the end 
consider the worst failure is success, and 
they are satisfied—and put up a sign 
“This road don’t get you anywhere, keep 
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