22 The Colorado Experiment Station 
immaturity of the beet at harvest time and the readiest suggestion 
in the way of correction would be the application of phosphoric 
acid. We will later give some results obtained with this fertilizer. 
In regard to the production of molasses some of our beets pro¬ 
duce as much as nine and even more percent. Molasses is here used 
to designate the second gre^n syrup that goes to the Steffens house 
and the percentage is calculated on the beets cut. The statement is 
made by Ruempler that the German factories average two and one- 
half percent, but as the most of them produce only raw sugar this 
may retain a great deal of the molasses which in our factories goes 
to the Steffens plant. I am, however, credibly informed that some 
factories in this country have produced as low as two and one-half 
percent of molasses calculated on the beets. 
It is not customary here to use artificial fertilizers and there is 
not enough manure produced to dress more than a small fraction 
of the acreage planted to beets annually. Some people are now 
using manure more liberally than formerly, which is much to their 
credit and to the benefit of our farming, but the effects of the 
amounts used, whether they be good or bad, constitute no factor in 
the questions which present themselves. I have stated the results 
obtained by the use of artificial fertilizers without going into any 
considrable discussion of the results, but will repeat that the experi¬ 
ments show that the application of fertilizers increases the yield of 
beets and in most cases the yield of sugar in pounds per acre; the 
duplicate trials are not concordant and the results cannot be inter¬ 
preted, but seem to indicate that the question is not one of plant 
food but something else. The twenty-six trials, repeated a second 
year on the same grounds, making in all fifty-two trials and four 
checks, leave us in the greatest uncertainty regarding the whole mat¬ 
ter. There is no apparent reason for this lack of agreement. The 
soil of the west half may be a little lighter, but this half varies as 
much from north to south as the field does from east to west, still the 
results are different on the east and west halves irrespective of the 
fertilizers applied, so we are left to determine or to guess whether 
the differences are in greater measure due to differences in the soil 
or to the different effects of the fertilizers applied. This is most 
strikingly shown by the tabulated results for 1909. 
These differences cannot be attributed to differences in cultiva¬ 
tion such as date of planting, preparation of seed bed, variety of 
seed, thinning, cultivation, irrigation, time of harvesting, weather 
conditions, attack of fungi or insects, or time of harvesting and sub¬ 
sequent treatment before delivery to the factory; in all these re¬ 
spects the conditions were alike. The amounts of the fertilizers 
added were neither so small as to produce no results nor so heavy as 
to be of themselves injurious, both extremes were avoided. These 
