Committee Report on Fertilizers 
FERTILIZER AND THE CITRUS GROVE 
J. A. Stevens, DeLand, Fla. 
Mr. President , Ladies and Gentlemen: 
The word fertilizer usually brings to 
the average citrus grower’s mind a vision 
of a two-hundred-pound bag of dry, pow¬ 
dery material, with the name of some fer¬ 
tilizer company and its brand printed on 
the bag, and a tag with inspection stamp 
affixed and a printed analysis guarantee¬ 
ing the contents of the bag attached. Such 
guaranteed analysis will read something 
like this: 
Ammonia, not less than_.4 per cent 
Available phosphoric acid, not less 
than---8 per cent 
Potash, not less than_12 per cent 
and following will be printed the names 
of the materials composing the fertilizer, 
from which these elements are derived. 
To the average grower this is fertilizer, 
and when he has purchased his supply 
and applied it to his grove, the fertilizer 
question is settled—until time for the next 
application. If the trees make a good 
growth and mature a fine crop of fruit, 
he is pleased with the results of his fer¬ 
tilizer and buys more of the same brand 
next year. On the other hand, if the trees 
do not put on the growth he thinks they 
should, and if the matured crop is less 
than he expects and especially if it does 
not sell to good advantage, the average 
grower seems prone to blame the fertil¬ 
izer—thinks the fertilizer is not what it 
used to be, that the company must have 
lowered its standard, or has been careless 
in the mixing—and decides he will have 
to make a change in the kind of fertilizer 
he uses. 
Not infrequently, when these conditions 
result, the grower wishes he had drawn 
samples of that fertilizer and had it an¬ 
alyzed. 
x 4 s a matter of fact, if he had drawn 
samples and had the fertilizer analyzed, 
and had done the same with each lot of 
fertilizer previously purchased, he would 
probably find by a comparison of analyses 
of fertilizers of the same brand or guar¬ 
antee that the fertilizer which he thought 
had failed to give satisfactory results was 
in reality the same in every way as he had 
used before; or, if there was any differ¬ 
ence, it would be infinitesimal and easily 
accounted for by variations in the chem¬ 
ists’ calculations. 
If the two lots of fertilizer were really 
the same, why, then, the difference in re¬ 
sults? Because fertilizer, in the sense in 
which it has just been referred to, is but 
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