6 
Colorado Experiment Station 
strong, soft and hard. These may be synonomous terms, but not 
.necessarily so, though we find them so used. 
The plan of our work includes field experiments in which we 
cannot control all of the conditions, and later a series of experiments 
in which we can control all of the conditions. By means of the field 
experiments we hope to ascertain what the normal characteristics 
of our wheat really are, both in regard to composition and to the 
bread-making qualities of the flour produced. We found at the 
very beginning that this phase of our work required much more ex¬ 
tended experimentation than we really desired to undertake, but it 
was unavoidable. Besides, this seemed to be the only way to- an¬ 
alyze the effects of the individual fertilizers usually applied in agri¬ 
culture, i. e., nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and in our case a 
fourth element, largely under our control, water. Concerning the 
effects of these elements upon the character, composition and prop¬ 
erties of wheat, little seems to have been done. The effects upon the 
yield have been studied. Some observations have also been made 
upon the part that the time of application plays in the yield and pro¬ 
perties of the grain, this is especially true of the nitrogen; but these 
observations have been incidental to the experiments rather than a 
main object. We have been unable to study these points as we 
wished to; this is especially true in regard to the effects of the 
water applied. We have been exceedingly fortunate, however, in 
obtaining samples of wheat grown under controlled conditions so 
far as the application of water is concerned which answer our pur¬ 
poses just as well as though we had made the experiments ourselves. 
We have applied the three fertilizers, nitrogen, phosphorus 
and potassium, in different quantities. The latter two were added 
at one time, but the nitrogen was not. The nitrogen work consisted 
of three series of experiments, in which the minimum quantity of 
nitrogen used was applied to all of the plots at the same time. Two 
of the series subsequently received another application, so that one 
series received a minimum 1 amount, one series received twice and one 
three times the minimum amount. 
So far as the relative amounts are concerned, these ratios are 
true for the phosphorus and potassium, but the total amount was 
applied at the time of planting. 
The cultivation of the soil was another point necessary to con¬ 
sider. The land used is not virgin soil, but has been under cultiva¬ 
tion probably as long as most of our lands, an estimate of between 
35 and 40 years would probably be correct. Deep cultivation of our 
prairie soils is not usually practiced. This is a result of experience 
on the part of the early settlers, who found that they obtained the 
