T HIS month we 
nearly came a 
cropper!— we of the 
program committee. For 
we have to get the lec¬ 
turers as well as supply 
the ideas ; and some¬ 
times the idea we have 
supplied, and the lec¬ 
turer we can get, do not 
fit together any better 
than the round peg and 
the square hole. This 
month, for example, we 
had airily assigned to 
fertilizers, and the man 
on whom we had 
counted to tell us all 
there is in the world to 
know about fertilizers 
went off to some con¬ 
vention at the other ends 
of the earth last month, 
caught malaria or 
measles or what not 
while he was there, and 
has been invalided ever 
since he came back. Of 
course he knew he was going to the convention, and of course 
he told us; but the date was far ahead of our need of him. So 
it was just the contrariness of things generally that held up our 
plans. 
Of course there was a mad scramble at the eleventh hour — for 
that wretched man never told us until the eleventh hour! — and 
we each worked hard enough to have provided a whole season’s 
lectures in those final moments. Never again will we be without a 
reserve! That much it has taught us. 
It is certainly curious how things work about, though. Cor¬ 
nered as we were, Polly Addicks was bewailing the situation at her 
dinner table the night before the Club meeting, in the presence of 
a hoary old soldier of fortune that Hal had brought home that 
night for the first time. Courtly is no name for him, and of 
course he was most concerned and interested in Polly’s predica¬ 
ment. And there, before she ever dreamed of such a thing, she 
had found us a lecturer! For this nice old person, who was an 
ex-diplomat or something like that, knew more about some kinds 
of plant food than the other man, I verily believe, for he had 
looked after the interests of some great company that had con¬ 
cessions in the arid and waste places of the earth, where Provi¬ 
dence has put the materials in storage that our lands here are in 
greatest need of. 
So he came with Polly to the meeting, and we had a delightful 
afternoon. For besides telling us about feeding plants, he told 
us a great deal about these waste places where the food for them 
is locked away, waiting to be dug or blasted or washed out, and 
altogether he was most entertaining and much nicer than the regu¬ 
lar fertilizer man could possibly have been, I am sure. 
We all had heard and read a hundred times at least that the 
three principle chemical elements that plants require are nitrogen, 
phosphates and potash. But when he had developed this bald 
statement into a little story about each, I felt myself getting an 
understanding of which was which, and why, that had always 
eluded me, try as I would to catch it and look it in the eye. Ni¬ 
trates are the tonic, the energy givers — never in the least degree 
in the world stimulants, this he made a great point of. A very, 
very little bit does a great amount of work, because it makes the 
other foods consumed by the plant do their work — just as tonic 
gives us an appetite and ? 
by making us eat and 
relish, increases strength 
and vigor. So nitrates- 
are never given alone to- 
a plant, any more than 
the doctor gives us only 
our tonic; at least, they 
are given alone only in 
very small quantities. 
And of course the other 
foods are all of them in 
the ground—the table is 
spread, as it were— 
when this is permissible. 
Invaluable as they are,, 
it is a curious thing that 
nitrates are nearly al¬ 
ways not there when it’s 
our gardens that we are 
talking about. But away 
up on a desert plateau 
down in Chile, thou¬ 
sands of feet above the 
level of the sea, there is 
seventy-five miles of 
them one way by twenty 
miles the other, by from 
three to ten feet the other — enough, he told us, to last about three 
hundred and fifty years, according to best calculations. We were 
left in suspense as to what we are to do then—but that’s another 
story. 
How all this material was stored away in such an inconvenient 
place has furnished food for speculation for ever so long a time, 
and for ever so many people. Generally it has come to be be¬ 
lieved that it is the result of the decomposition of marine life, 
both animal and vegetable, for of course the sea flowed over this 
vast plain at some far distant age. The fact that there is no- 
rain there now is the secret of their preservation, for nitrates are 
very soluble and leach away where there is moisture to dissolve 
them. 
Phosphoric acid—that element which makes the flowers, as we 
have from time everlasting been told — is nearer at hand in its 
rock or earthy form, for South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee 
all have large deposits of it, and of course in its ground bone 
form we are all familiar with it. These phosphate deposits in 
the earth are really allied to the ground bone of our potting 
benches and rose beds, in a way, for they are nothing else than 
petrified bone, supposedly, and excrement of long since vanished 
races of animals. 
Potash, that makes the fruits, lurks in unleached wood ashes, 
and comes honestly forth in potassium sulphate, which we may 
buy if we choose. The wood ashes are better because they have 
phosphoris acid in them, too — a very little—and that, it seems, is 
a good thing. But back we always come to the nitrates, whatever 
else we have. For only in combination with them—released, 
cooked, prepared by them — will potash or phosphates, either one, 
perform their allotted tasks. 
These nitrates are not just nitrogen, though, please remember, 
I made the mistake of saying something about “nitrogen” and 
brought down reams of explanation about the nitrogen of dried 
fish, cotton-seed meal, tankage and such nitrogenous fertilizers 
not being the material which plants can take up. Nitrogen as a 
nitrate is the thing they must have—being particular about their 
diet. And so it is in the direct nitrate of soda form that we were 
advised to apply this curious and elusive substance — elusive act¬ 
ually, for it rushes away like the snow before a July sun, seem- 
Editor’s Note: The garden 
club is a great factor in neigh¬ 
borhood betterment. Here is a 
true story of the work of a certain such club and its accomplishments taken from the diary of one 
of its members. What this club actually did should be a stimulus to all who love gardens and a 
guide to the ways and means of improving our towns and villages. These chapters began in the 
February issue, when the organisation of the Club was discussed. Each installment shows how the 
program of activities was followed out. 
30 
