Deterioration Sugar Beets Due to Nitrates 67 
we have 980 pounds of nitrogen. The average yield of fresh beets 
for the ten plots was 11.98 tons per acre. The plant food necessary 
to grow 44 tons of fresh beets, practically four such crops as that 
actually harvested from these fields, is according to Hoffman, 320.5 
pounds of potash, 157.8 pounds phosphoric acid and 345.2 pounds 
of nitrogen, and according to Strohmer, Briem and Fallada it is 
considerably less, 260.2 pounds potash, 79.4 pounds of phosphoric 
acid a.nd 276.2 pounds of nitrogen. Wiminer found that about 98 
pounds of soluble phosphoric acid produced this amount of beets 
most advantageously. It would be wholly without object to cal¬ 
culate how many crops the plant food in the surface three feet of this 
soil on the day of sampling would have sufficed to grow. All that 
the figures are presented for is to show that the land at the beginning 
of these experiments was sufficiently well supplied with plant food 
to have grown better crops. There is no reason that I know of 
to suppose that there was an injuriously large supply unless the 
amount .of injurious ash for each 100 pounds of sugar be consid¬ 
ered as indicating such a condition, but a comparison of Analyses 
XV and XXVIII with the analyses from XXXI to XXXVII inclu¬ 
sive, does not clearly justify such a conclusion. If anything is 
shown by these analyses, it is that the application of fertilizers other 
than potash and phosphoric applied separately has not only failed to 
consistently and materially increase the crop, but has actually de¬ 
creased its quality so that we have a direct answer to our main in¬ 
quiries. First: That the increase in crop is neither certain enough 
nor sufficient to justify the application of fertilizers experimented 
with. Second: That the quality of the beets was deleteriously 
rather than beneficially affected, except in two cases in which potash 
and phosphoric acid were applied separately. 
These results are in harmony with others obtained in this state 
by previous experimenters, but we are not in harmony with results 
obtained in other states and countries. The important thing to us 
is that we would have little or no reason to hope for any improve¬ 
ment in volume and quality of our crops by the application of fer¬ 
tilizers even if they were at our command at prices which our people 
could afford. 
Analysis XVIII represents beets grown with no fertilizer other 
than stockyard manure, 10 tons per acre, plowed under to a depth 
of 10 inches, while No. XX was grown on a sandy soil without any 
fertilizer. The water supply for this land was good in 1910. In 
addition to this there was a rainfall of more than 9 inches during 
the growing season, April to October. The quality of the beets in 
Analysis XX is decidedly bad so far as injurious nitrogen is con¬ 
cerned. It is a known fact that beets which have suffered from lack 
of water, drought, are poorer in quality than beets grown with 
