HOW CAN WE MAINTAIN THE FERTILITY OF 
OUR COLORADO SOILS? 
BY WM. P. HEADDEN. 
This bulletin has no other purpose than to present to-the farm¬ 
ers of Colorado some of the most patent facts relative to the main¬ 
tenance of the productiveness of their lands. The writer has pre¬ 
sented this subject repeatedly, either in lectures before Farmers' 
Institutes or bulletins, and particularly in the pages of our too 
short-lived Agricola Aridus. The presentation of this subject has, 
heretofore, apparently failed to attract the attention of our farmers, 
either because of the unskillful manner in which it has been pre¬ 
sented, or because it was not opportune, the farmers not yet having: 
come to a realization of the importance of the question, as one ap¬ 
pertaining to their lands and to their prosperity. The time may be 
more auspicious for obtaining the attention of a reasonable per¬ 
centage of the persons for whose benefit the Experiment Stations 
have their existence. It is in hope that this is the fact, that I pre¬ 
sent the following considerations, and not for the purpose of pre¬ 
senting any new results, or any facts which are not already well 
known. 
OUR COEORADO SOILS ARE NOT INEXHAUSTIBLY RICH. 
In the early days of Colorado agriculture, when the railroad 
land agent was endeavoring to induce homeseekers to settle on our 
prairie lands, it was, perhaps, pardonable to emphasize their virgin* 
condition and to claim for them inexhaustible fertility. This fic¬ 
tion was soon dispelled by the plain facts, so plain that no one could 
misunderstand them. The magnificent yields of the first few years 
after the lands were brought under irrigation, were followed by 
rapidly decreasing ones, until they fell to one-half or one-third of 
their former weight or measure, and it became evident to the most 
obtuse that a remedy had to be found. 
That this result would ensue, and that rapidly, was easily to- 
be foreseen; the nature of our soils justified no other belief or expec¬ 
tation, and we now begin to apprehend that in our climate itself we 
have added reasons for the fact that the virgin fertility of our soils 
was of comparatively short duration when subjected to continuous 
cropping without fertilization. 
