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PLANT FOOD ELEMENTS
Nitrogen and the Way In
Which It Is Absorbed.
STATE CHEMIST’S LETTER NO. 4
___
Actual Quantities of Plant Food In
Soils—What Dstermlncs the Crop
Producing Power of the Soil, Etc.
Interesting and Instructive Treatise.
Naturally the nitrogen we find in the
plant by analysis next claims our at
tent ion. Ab 1 told you in my last let¬
ter that there are nearly eighty gafi
Ions of nitrogen in one hundred
Ions of air. you would quite naturally
exclaim that then would be no need
to bother about providing nitrogen fot
the crops, as they ought to be able to
obtain all they want from the encr
mous oceans of it floating all around
and about them. Yes, one would natur¬
ally suppose so. but alas. It is not true;
the plan^ is helpless to feed on the ni
trogen around it in the air, no mat¬
ter how thirtsy it may be for It. It is
like the shipwrecked sailor in the open
boat at sea, though parched and dying
with thirst, yet he can not slake hid
thirst, though there be nothing but
water,'water, all about him.
It seems as though there were a cer¬
tain malice in Nature in so constitut¬
ing plants that, they cannot take the
nitrogen out of the air directly, yet
perhaps it is a good thing they cannot,
because if they could, life would he so
easy that w*e probably would not exert
ourslves as much as we should, Ni
trogen being the most expensive ele¬
ment of plant food, if It were provided
free of cost like the carbon, hydrogen
and oxygen, w-e could grow such enor
mous crops at such small cost., that the
cost of living would be so reduced, that
a man would not have the same urgent
stimulus behind him to work and tc
labor that he now has.
The Form In Which Plants Absorb
Nitrogen.
But to return to our subject, the
plant, requires nitrogen, but it cannot
take it. through its leaves; it has to
take it up through its roots, and In or¬
der for the roots to take it up, the ni
trogent must be combined with nitrate,
It must he in the form of nitrate of goda.
or nitrate of lime, or nitrate of m»g
r.esia. or nitrate of potash, or some
other form of nitrate before the plant
can utilize it. If we put any organ¬
ic matter containing nitrogen into the
soil, either vegetable or animal, as cot¬
ton seed meal, blood, meat, or even
if we plow under green crops, they will
begin to decay and petrify in the soil, j
until (lie nitrogen which they con¬
tain in the form of protein (about
which I wrote you so much last year)
is changed into a number of other
forms, being finally converted into a
nitrate otter the decay of the ooriginal
sustaiK-e hue been fully completed.
As a nitrate it is in a condition
where it dissolves easily in water, and
is then absorbed by the root hairs
and drawn up into the circulation of
the plant. Now the vast majority oi
plants have to obtain their nitrogen
in the roundabout manner just describ¬
ed, but there are few favored plants
which are able to obtain their nitrogen
out of the air through the instrumen¬
tality of certain minute organisms or
microbes in the soil. We will have
more to say of this later on. When the
organic matters 1 have described
above, animal or vegetable, as cotton
seed meal, blood meat, manure or
turned under green crops decay in thk
soil, the carbon and hydrogen which
are contained in them are not ab
sorbed like the nitrogen through the
roots into the plant, the plant does
not get its supply of carbon and hy
drogen in that way. They simply re
main in the soil to form what is known
as the humus of the soil, or the de
caved orgauic matter of the soli, which
improves its mechanical., condition,
gives It a dark or black aolor, and
serves as an excellent retainer of
moisture and heat in the soil. Refer
ring now to the analysis of a rich soil,
which 1 gave you in my last letter. w«
find that besides the organic subj
stance about which we have just been
talking, there are also the inorganic
or mineral substances, such as we
found In the ashes of the plant we first
analyzed.
The Various Elements Found In ths
Soil.
The most abundant substance of all
those mineral or ash elements in the
soil we find to be silica, or as you are
quatated with it, sand. You will re»
member there was in this particular
rich soil 71.55 pounds of silica ont of
every 100 pounds, and yet the wheat
plant grown on this soil only contained
two and three-quarters pounds of sill
ca out of every 100 pounds, and even
this was not absolutely essential to
the health and growth of the plant,
.Although we find alumina in the
we find none in the plaint. AJumnle
’.5 of the principal elements of a
THE WEEKLY BANNER.
ic acid found m tne sou ure riKewiae
found in the ash of the plant. Only
small quantities of these however are
required by the plant and they are al
ways abundant in soils. Soda is like
wise found in both soil and plant, but
is not essential to the plant. Phosphor
ie acid, potash ami lime are found in
only small quantifies in most soils,
but exist in considerable quantity in
the ash of the plants, and each one
0 f them j 5 absolutely necessary to
the life, growth and development of
the plant. For this reason, the other
‘XT
lc acid, lime and nitrogen.
Potash and phosphoric acid are
usually contained in soils fn small
varying from about one-tenth
of a pound In a hundred pounds of
the soil to one pound In one hundred
pounds. Although that amount looks
small: let ns figure it by the-acre,
Weight of the Soil Per Acre.
An avereage soil, when dry. if taken
to the depth of nine inches, will
weigh tllree to throe and one-half mil¬
lion pounds to the acre. Therefore a
soil containing one-tenth of one per
cent of phosphoric acid, would really
contain three thousand to thirty-five
hundred pounds of phosphoric acid per
acre, or as much as could be obtained
by the application of ten to twelve tons
of high-grade acid phosphate per acre.
You would at once then say that a soil
containing one-tenth per cent of pot¬
ash or phosphoric* acid ought to be a
rich soil and should not require any
fertilizers, but there you would be
wrong, because it matters not so much
what is the total amount of potash
or phosphonjc acid in an acre of soil
as it does to know in what condition
that phosphoric acid or potash exists.
Availability of the Plant-Food in the
Soil.
The question arises, is it soluble,
is It availably? It is in such condition
that the soil water can take it up and
convey it to the roots and root hairs
o? the plant, ready for absorption by
them into the plant-circulation? That
is why we find it necessary to put
acid phosphate and kainlt and other
fertilizers on lands which are being
constantly cropped; it is because the
constant cropping has exhausted or
drawn out of the soil the soluble phos¬
phoric acid and potash, available to
the plant, and we must either put on
a fertilizer containing them in a aolft
ble form, or we must let the soil rest
a while, that is "lie fallow-.” in order
that a fresh supply of plant food may
be made available by the slow action
of the soil water, the action of car¬
bonic acid, and the other organio acids
resulting from the decay of vegetable
and animal matters fn the soil. If
you cannot afford to either put on fer¬
tilizer or to let your land ‘‘lie fallow;”
then your next resource is to rotate
your crop; that is, to plant on the soil
which has begun to fail you some
other crop of a different nature, which
may not require so much of a certain
element of plant food as the previous
crop did. For instance, follow cotton
with peas or clover.
What Determines the Crop-Producing
Power of the Soil.
In considering the capacity of a soil
to produce crops we must remem¬
ber one thing, and that is that the es¬
sential element which exists in the
smallest amount settles the qustion of
th crop-producing powr of a soil. That
is to say. it a soil is vry rich in avail
able phosphoric acid, nitrogen, lime,
magnesia, and the other essential ash
elements, and yet be poor in available
polash, that soil cannot produce heavy
crops without the application of an
available potash fertilizer. If that soil
has only available potash enough in
it to produce ten bushels of corn per
acre, or two hundred pounds of seed
cotton per acre, then all you are going
to get out of that soli is ten bushels
of corn, or tw-o hundred pounds of
seed cotton, no matter whether
was available phosphoric acid and
trogen and lime, etc., in the soil
enough to produce forty bushels of
corn or fifteen hundred pounds of seed
cotton. This brings us to the question
of soil analysis, which we will treat in
our next letter,
JOHN M. McCANDLESS.
Beef and Dairy Cattle.
For many years the Georgians have
given much attention to the improve¬
ment of the stock of dairy cattle, and
all over the northern and middle sec¬
tions and iu some of the southern
counties are many first-clas dairy
farms stocked with cattle of the best
known milk breeds,
It has been the effort of the depart
ment of agriculture to encourage this
good work in every wav, and at the
same time to present to our farmers
every incentive to the improvement
of our beef cattle, and the newspa
pers ami agricultural journals of the
state have nobly backed up all these
efforts.
j Our most enterprieing farmers no
v es,^i;hg ya wr,cribs and smeke
l
N
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Mi 9 Ifi tfi 1 i
A fcfS a|i|
t J? Hit i©®fi$i|i splint if
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in need of anything in the Drug Line.* We give you BEST goods and prices
The Gaitev Drug i
It is time now that we were having our
great packing houses in our own cities,
supplied with the best of beef from
our own stock yards. There is al
ready in the suburbs of Atlanta the
packing house of T. R, Sawtell; an
other in Brooks county and others in
other sections of the state. The great
scarcity of beef from the cattle states
of the Union and the consequent high
prices ought to wake up our people to
the grand opportunity of cheapening
this important article of diet and keep¬
ing in our own state the money that
now goes beyond our borders.
Not only clover, alfalfa (or lucerne)
and other grasses of the northern, mid¬
dle and western sections of the Union
flourish In many parts of Georgia, but
our own native grasses and our soil
enriching pea vines in every section of
the state give abundance of the best
hay and supply the finest pasturage for
stock.
The prosperity of our state will lie
greatly increased by the establishment
of great stock farms, not only by the
consequent cheapening of our meat
supplies, but also by the wonderful en
ricliing of the soil, wherever herds of
cattle are kept.
GA. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE.
Filthy Tenqples In India •
Sacred cows often defile Iudiau
temples, but worse yet is a body
that’s polluted by constipation.
Don’t permit it. Cleanse your sys¬
tem with Dr. King’s New Life Pills
and avoid untold misery. They
give lively livers, active bowels,
good digestion, fiue appetite.
Only 25c at Galley Drug Co.
Tax Receiver’s Notice.
The tax books are now opeu for re¬
ceiving tax returns for the year 1902,
and I will be at the different, precincts at
the times named below:
tfkpflield, Apr. 2S, May 10, June 6.
Lorraine “ 24, “ 28, “ 18
Honey U. “ 25, “ 80, “ 20.
Remainder of time at J. J. Langford
& Sou’s store, in Conyers.
G. H. Hull, T. R.
Bears tha Tl» Kind Yw Haw Always Bo^R
Bigaatar*
till*
and Healers in Building Material'
All kinds of Lumber, S.hingLs,
Laths, Lime, Cement, Brick etc., fit
lowest prices. Can fill orders prompt¬ materia
ly and will be glad to furnish
ior all repair work and building. Wm
make prices a? low as possible, and try
to please all customers. calL
Give us a
WALLACE & STILL-
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ft it) high grade steel
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The Fence of Economy The Ail’Round Fence
Examine the the Ellwood YoucansecanEUwoodFef pad ^J;
way L in use in any;
i Fence is woven. The eye country, almc J*." ‘ - /
A of a practical man will /, , neighborhood. dealer handbag i
a everywhere im
see at a glance why / J t them jhoula i
j»\ it stands strains— j Bk If yours them,
i \ /iiisp act fcwi
never saps. write to
buckles, pulls t S,H ' 1
k\ \ incUilr.-tu-i Ihifjro. / /
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