Crop growing and crop feeding; a book for the farm, garden and orchard, with special reference to the practical methods of using commercial fertilizers therein

Front matter

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Preface

This book is the result of an effort to put into the plain language of the farm the facts which scientists have worked out in the laboratory, and which practical experience has proved to be applicable to the every day work of the farm. It is written for men who know nothing of chemistry, but who are anxious to learn something of the chemical combinations that are of value in the feeding of crops, and the best way to use them in the permanent improvement of their soil. For men who know nothing of the mysteries of plant life, but who are anxious to learn how plants live, grow and perform all their work in soil and air, so that they may be better able to comprehend their needs, and supply them in a rational manner.

While endeavoring to make the book scientifically accurate in all its statements I have tried to avoid all pedantry, but to make the whole so plain that the "wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err." I have undertaken the work with a good deal of misgiving as to what should be its exact position on some of the problems in nature as yet not fully solved, and about which there is much yet to be learned by the wisest minds. When such problems are attempted, I will candidly say that I do not as yet fully comprehend the processes involved, I will give the results so far as they are known. The acquirement of nitrogen by leguminous plants is one of the problems that has not yet been fully worked out, and while we know that they do get the nitrogen through the agency of minute organisms that live with them on their roots, the exact process by which these microscopic forms get the nitrogen is not yet fully understood. But for our purpose it is enough to know that they do get it and store it in the roots and soil for the future crop.

N. C. College of A. &. M. A.,

Raleigh, N. C.

Table Of Contents

Preface 5

Chapter I.— The Air 17

How green leaved plants get food from the air. — How plants get food from the soil.— The course of the soil-water in the plant.

Chapter II.— The Growth of a Seed 24 The flower. — The fruit

Chapter TIT. — Plant Brooding 28

Improving the cotton plant. — cotton breeding.

Chapter TV.— The Soil 40

Living soils and dead soils. — How to determine what the soil needs.

Chapter V.— Plant Food 4fi

Chapter VI. — Sources of Fertilizing Materials 48

Sources of nitrogen.— Barnyard and stable manures. — No need for buying nitrogen. — Leguminous plants the true source of nitrogen for the farmer.

Chapter VII. — Phosphorus, Its Sources and Use in Plant Feeding 01

Bone meal as a source of phosphoric acid. — Thomas slag, slag meal, basic slag as a source of phosphoric acid. — Marls as a source of phosphoric acid. — Phosphatic guano. — The great phosphate rock deposits. — Some erroneous popular names. — The value of insoluble phasphates.

Contents 7

Chapter Vlll.— Potash 70

Potash as essential plant food. — Soils which need potash most. — What is the best form of potash? — Crude potash salts. — Manufactured potash salts. — Capacity of the soil for absorbing potash. — Dangers from potash. — Potash in waste products. — Cotton seed hull ashes. — Green sand marl.

Chapter IX. — Lime and Liming Land 77

Sulphate of lime from plaster. — Gas house lime. — Sulphate of lime as a waste product. — Agricultural salt. — Shell marls. — Tan bark ashes. — Swamp muck or peat.

Chapter X. — Mixing Fertilizers on the Farm 85

How to mix fertilizers.

Chapter XL — The Maintenance of Fertility D-i

Using fertilizers in continuous cropping. — Why a short I'otation is best. — Some of the mistakes made.

Chapter XIL — How to Use Commercial Fertilizers for the Maintenance

of Fertility 102

The rotation for the cotton crop. — What is the best rotation for cotton? — Curing the pea vine hay. — Resting the land. — Another cotton rotation.

Chapter XITL — Where Winter Wheat is the Money Crop 130

Rotations for the winter wheat crop. — Fertilizers for wheat. — What a crop of wheat removes from the soil. — Thorough preparation of the soil as important as fertilizers for wheat. — Green manuring for wheat. — Wheat after a hoed crop.

Chapter XIV. — Fertilizers for the Permanent Pasture 133

Grasses for permanent pasture.

Chapter XV. — Fertilizers Where Hay is the Money Crop 137

Farming for hay.

Chapter XVI. — Where To1)acco is the Money Crop 141

Forms of fertilizers for tobacco.

Chapter XVII. — Fertilizers for the Corn Crop 14()

How shall we utilize the corn crop as a food crop? — The silo and ensilage. — Making the ensilage. — The feeding value of ensilage. — Manure from ensilage feeding. — Shredding the fodder from corn crop.

Chapter XVIIL— Testing the Needs of the Soil 154

8 Contents '

CiiAPTEU XXXIl. — Lettuce 223

Culture of frame lettuce in the South. — Lettuce in the open ground. — The manurial requirements of lettuce. — Varieties of lettuce.

Chapter XXXIII.— Melons 228

Muskmelons. — Watermelons.

Chapter XXXIV.— Onions 331

Growing the sets. — Early green onions in the South. — The general crop of onions. — Varieties for keeping. — Another method of growing onions. — Fertilizers for the onion crop.

Chapter XXXV. — English, or Garden, Peas 337

Chapter XXXVI.— Irish Potaotes 238

Soils for the potato crop. — Manurial requirements of the potato. — Potatoes as a field crop in the North. — Cultivation. — Early potatoes in the South. — Fertilizing the Southern early crop. — Growing seed potatoes in the South. Potatoes in the home garden. — Varieties of .

potatoes. — Do potatoes run out? — Some Station investigations of . — '

Po"tato culture and manuring.

Chapter XXXVII. — Sweet Potatoes 35.")

Manuring for the sweet potato crop. — Growing the plants. — Cultivation of the sweet potato. — Planting the late crop in the South. — Harvesting sweet potatoes. — Keeping sweet potatoes in winter. — Construction of a potato house. — Sweet potatoes North and South. — Varieties of the sweet potatoes.— Evaporating sweet potatoes. — Yields of sweet potatoes from large and small tubers.

Chapter XXXVIII.— Tomatoes 364

Growing the plants. — Fertilizing the tomato crop. — The field crop of tomatoes. — Southern blight. — Varieties of tomatoes. — Forcing tomatoes in winter. — Shall tomatoes be pruned in the open ground.— The forcing house for tomatoes. — Commercial fertilizers In tomato forcing. — Further reports on chemical fertilizers in forcing tomatoes.

Chapter XXXIX. — Some Special Formulas for Truck Crops 38 1

For celery. — For Irish potatoes. — For beets and lettuce. — For cab bages, cauliflowers, cucumbers and melons. — For spinach.— For radishes and turnips.— For asparagus. — For egg plants and tomatoes. — For onions. — For sweet potatoes.- — For beans and peas. i

Chapter XL. — Some Station Investipitions of Fertilizers 381

Rhode Island potato formulas. — Proposed formula for oniuns. — Rhode Island formula for general purposes. — A compost with hen manure. — Formula for corn on a sandy soil. — Formula for millet and Hungarian. — Formula for barley. — Formula for spinach, lettuce, etc. — Chemical action of lime. — Bio-chemical effects oi lime. — When to apply lime. — Improvement of worn lands.

Contents 9

CiiAi'TKU XIX.— The Restoration of Worn Out Land 158

Chapter XX. — How Legumes Help the Farmer 161

Nitrification in general. — Talking free nitrogen from the air through plant growth. — Nitrification of organic matter in soils. — Conditions essential to the formation of nitrates in the soil. — Nitrification and its products. — Nitrates are easily drained from the soil. — Crops which prevent loss of nitrogen. — Nitrogen fixing crops and their place in a rotation.

Chapter XXL — The Best Leguminous Phmts 168

Red clover. — The place for clover in a rotation. — Crimson clover. — Cow peas. — Vetches. — Burr clover. — The soy bean. — The velvet bean. — The peanut. — Varieties of the peanut. — Alfalfa. — Forage plants not leguminous. — Millets. — Teosinte. — Kaffir corn.

Chapter XXI L — Some Minor Crops 185

Oats. — Soiling crops. — Crops for hogs to gather.

Chapter XXI II. — Commercial Fertilizers and the Market Garden. . . , .193

Complete fertilizers essential to the garden crops. — Home mixing essential to the market gardener.

Chapter XX IV. — Asparagus 106

Growing the plants. — Preparing for the permanent plantation.

Chaptei{ XXV.— Beans in the Market Garden 300

Lima beans. — Forcing snap beans.

Chapter XXVL— Cahbages 203

Succession, or summer cabbages. — Late cabbages. — Late cabbages in the South.

Chapter XXVI L— Cauliflower 308

Early cauliflowers in the South. — Cauliflower seed and varieties.

Chapter XXVIIL— Corn 311

Chapter XXIX.— Celery 313

Methods of culture. — Other methods of blanching celery. — Fertilizers for the celery crop. — Varieties of celery.

Chapter XXX. — Cucumbers 318

Varieties of cucumbers. — Fertilizers for the cucumber crop. — Starting cucumbers under glass to advance them.

Chapter XXXL — Egg Plants 331

Varieties of egg plants. — Fertilization.

10 Contents

The man v/ith a secret.

Chaptku XLIl. — The Strawberry as a Field Crop 306

Manurial requirements of the strawberry. — Fertilizer formula for the strawberry. — Forcing the strawberry.

Blackberries and raspberries. — Manurial needs of black and raspberries. — Propagating the plants.

Chapter XLIY. — Fertilizers in the A^ineyard and Orchard 313

Feeding the apple orchard. — Planting an apple orchard.— Starting the trees.— Cultivating and cropping the orchard. — Analysis of the apple tree and its products.

Chapter XLV.— The Pear 320

Feeding the pear.

Chapter XLVI. — Peaches, Plums and Cherries 325

Planting a peach orchard. — Feeding the peach. — -The plum. — Cherries.

Chapter XLVIT.— The Grape 333

Propagation of the grape.

Chaptei! Xr;VI]I.— Gardening Under Glass 336

Winter lettuce.— Lettuce in cold frames. — Making the frames. — Soil and planting.— Cauliflower and lettuce combined.— Radishes and beets in frames. — Cold frame culture in more northern sections. — Frame culture of winter flowers in frames. — Frames for the commercial florist in the South. — Propagating tender roses in the South. — Propagating hardy roses in frames North. — Asparagus in cold frames. — Strawberries in frames. — Importnnc^ of water in intensive gardening. — Hotbeds. — The forcing house.

Chapter XLIX. — Some General Conclusions 3G2

Appendi.x 373

Useful tables. — Constituents of forage plants per acre. — Ashes.— Percentage of the availability of the different forms of nitrogen. — What crops remove from the soil. — Analysis of the fertilizer and fertilizer materials. — Amount and value of manure produced by different farm animals. — Food constituents of different parts of the peanut plant.

Introduction

The only excuse I have to offer for the manner in which this book presents the subject of crop growing and crop feeding, is the fact that there is so mucli of ignorance, even among men nominally educated, in regard to the vital processes in plant life. I meet men daily, who have taken college degrees and are in professional life, who still think that the sap rises in the trees in the spring and runs down in the fall; that is about all they know of plant life, and even that little is not true. They have never studied plant life in an intelligent manner, for in all of the old college curriculums botany has been rigorously ignored, or even if attempted, it was only a little spring time study and a brief effort to learn the scientific names by which the plants are called; the main effort was merely to do this, and the result was that the student knew no more about the wonderful life of the plants around him than he did before. Hence educated men, or rather men crammed with the information of the books, fall into all sorts of errors and believe all sorts of old wives' fables about plants. A very intelligent gentleman who is interested in some phosphatic rock mines in this State, told me once that the rock they mined was more soluble than ordinary phosphatic rock because of the heavy forest growth above the deposit, for the sap running out from the roots of the trees in the fall had a solvent effect on the rock below. This man has traveled all over Europe and America, and has a large fund of general information, and no argument I could use would convince him that no sap runs from the trees in the fall. Late one fall a few years ago a reader of one of our city papers wrote an inquiry to the editor, saying that he had noticed that just before a rain the springs and brooks had swelled, and he wanted to know the reason. The editor, a college bred man, told him that the explanation was perfectly simple, as at that season the sap was running out of the tree roots and raised the springs. He never seemed to think of the real reason, the release of atmospheric pressure just before a rain. 1 wrote to the paper and told him that there was no such thing as sap running out of the roots of the trees, and entered into some explanation of the processes of plant life. It was amusing after my letter was published, to note the surprise with which it was received. Educated men stopped me on the street and asked if it was really true that the sap does not run out of the roots, and that all plants get the larger part of their fabric from the air and not from the soil.

ill)

This same general ignorance in regard to plant life is the cause of so many otherwise intelligent men believing that one plant can be suddenly transformed into an entirely different one. That wheat will change to chess or cheat. Men who have studied the life history of vegetation know the utter absurdity of this notion, but it is so firmly fixed in the minds of many intelligent men that it is perfectly useless to argue with them. They have never been taught accuracy of observation in their youth, and hence jump to conclusions that are not warranted by the facts. Some months ago a farmer in this State wrote me a letter, asking if there was any premium offered by the Agricultural Department of the State for the positive proof that wheat would turn to cheat. I answered that there was no such offer, and I knew there was no such proof. A friend of mine, a leading lawyer of the writer's neighborhood, then wrote to me that I had treated his friend rather curtly, for he knew that he had the positive proof, and he would send it to me. Accordingly a few days after I received a package containing a well grown plant of cheat with numerous wheat grains adhering to the tips of the rootlets. I wrote to the lawyer that if this was what he called proof, he would have to learn to sift evidence better or his reputation as a lawyer would suffer. The fact that dead wheat grains were attached to the feeding tips of the rootlets of the cheat, was simply proof that the wheat decayed and the roots of the cheat found the grains and were feeding on them. If the cheat had really germinated from the wheat, the grains would never have been found on the place where the absorptive root hairs were foraging for food, but would have been right up where they started from, and that what he regarded as positive proof of the transformation of wheat into cheat was, on the other hand, a positive proof that no such change had taken place, for the roots were simply seeking food, and the weather conditions that killed the wheat were just the kind that were favorable to the development of the hardy cheat, which never winter kills. It is with the hope that a study in a simple manner of some of the processes of plant life will help to banish superstitions, and will be the means of some of our readers getting a better understanding of the reasons that underlie the culture of our crops, and the supplying of them with food. We have made the effort to avoid, as far as possible, language that might confuse the unlearned, and to clothe facts in the every day language of the farm so far as possible.

It will be noticed that we state that 95 per cent, or more of every plant comes from the air, and not from the soil, and we endeavor to explain how the plant gets the material from the air. But to see in a practical way how much of a plant comes from the air, take a good sized corn stalk and weigh it. Now cut it up and dry it thoroughly. Not merely air-dry, but dry it as a chemist would dry it in his dry bath. Now weigh it again, and you find that it contained a great deal of water. Now burn it carefully and completely, till you have only white ashes left. You will find that these weigh but a trifle as compared with the great corn plant. And yet that little handful of ashes contains all the plant got from the soil except the nitrogen, and that the soil originally got from the air. The mineral matters, or ash elements, are what you have left in the ashes. The rest was carbon and water, and it has gone off in the shape in which the plant originally got it, as carbonic acid, to feed other plants and make other structures, for there is no destruction in nature. The same old materials are being used over and over again, perpetually building up new forms. In regard to the nature of commercial fertilizers, there is a general notion among farmers that they are mere stimulants, and that while they can be used to increase crops, their final effect is to exhaust the soil. The injudicious way in which commercial fertilizers have been used in the Eastern Middle States, and in the Southern States, has led to this opinion. Used as they have been in the past by the cotton and tobacco growers of the South, they have been a curse to the country, and have led to poverty of soil and poverty to the farmer.

But this is not the fault of the commercial fertilizer, for well prepared fertilizers are simply plant food, such as we find in any manure; and if properly used for the improvement of the soil, they can be made the means of restoring and maintaining the fertility of our lands more efficiently and cheaply than in any other manner. The only classes of substances used as applications to the soil to which the term stimulant can be properly applied are lime and plaster. These are used not so much for their value as plant food, but for their effects in rendering other matters, notably potash, available in the soil. They thus stimulate the soil to give up to plants matters it already has, and thus gradually tend to the exhaustion of these things if carelessly used, with the notion that lime and plaster will make land rich because we see a good effect from their application. There are extensive districts in the North, where once the farmers got large crops from the use of plaster alone, and imagining that plaster was all they needed, they kept on in its application, and now find that there is nothing more for the plaster to give them and are compelled to use commercial fertilizers liberally. Had they known more of the real work the plaster was doing for them they could have avoided the gradual exhaustion of the mineral elements in their soil. But there are some writers who would persuade the farmer that in the use of commercial fertilizers alone they have all that is needed, and that land can be kept perennially fertile simply by giving every crop a liberal application of a complete fertilizer.

They beg us, when we urge the farmer to adopt a good rotation of crops in which the legumes are brought frequently to accumulate humus in the soil, to "give humus a rest," insisting that humus is not plant food, and that crops can be grown as well without it as with it. It may be that in a season of very favorable weather and abundance of moisture in the soil, the commercial fertilizers will have their best effects, even if there is no humus or vegetable decay present. But in a season like the one we have just passed through, we have found in late October, in a soil deficient in humus, all the fertilizer applied in the furrow, as dry as it was when applied. Not two hundred feet away was land in which the humus content was much greater, and here the plants had gotten the dissolved plant food, because of the superior mosture-retaining nature of the decayed vegetable matter. Therefore, even if this decay furnished us no nitrogen, it would still be valuable for its mechanical effects in making the soil mellow, and in its power of retaining moisture for the plants. What we try to impress upon our readers in this book, above all else, is the fact that the true use of the commercial fertilizer is the maintenance and increase of the fertility and productiveness of the soil, and not so much for the immediate returns in sale crops. True farming does not consist in the dosing of the soil for every crop with a prescription some land doctor advises as a specific for that crop, but in so using these valuable plant foods in the improvement of the soil tliat there will be no need in any of our ordinary farm cropping for the use of what is called a complete fertilizer at any time, and seldom any need for an application directly to the sale crop.

Used in this way, there is no doubt that the fertility of the soil can be restored and maintained more cheaply and more rapidly by the use of commercial fertilizers than in any other way, though no farmer should wholly ignore the foundation of all rational farm improvement, the keeping and feeding of live stock in the best manner, and the making and saving in the most careful manner all the domestic manures. The deplorable condition of much of the cotton land in the South is due, not only to the injudicious use of commercial fertilizers as a means of getting sale crops, but to the entire abandonment of stock feeding by the cotton farmers. The annual cultivation of the soil in the one clean cultivated crop has used up the humus and none goes there, because there are no animals fed to make manure and no renovating crops between the cotton crops, and when a dry season comes, the fertilizers applied are not dissolved and the crops are poor. The season of 1900 was remarkable as the hottest and dryest on record in the South Atlantic States, and the lands without fertilizer did as well or better than those directly fertilized. But recently, meeting a ^farmer whom I knew was farming in a short rotation with legumes, I asked him about his cotton crop. "I expected to get 40 bales on 35 acres. The drought has affected me some, and I will have hardly more than 35 bales." All around this man's farm there are those who will hardly get a bale on five acres, and they spent more for fertilizers on their crop than he did, who gets a bale pejyacre. It is, therefore, with the earnest hope that we can induce farmers NortH and South, to understand the true use of commercial fertilizers that this book has been prepared. We have written it from the standpoint of the practical farmer, and have prepared it for practical farmers.

While living in the South, a native of the South, and striving with all my energy to aid in the building up of the agricultural and horticultural interests of the southern cultivators of the soil, the writer has had a wide experience in the growing of plants and crops in various sections, and has traveled and studied the practices 6f growers in all parts of the country. He therefore feels that he is prepared (to help farmers in various sections, and to contribute something, at least, to tne general advancement. The great interest that has been awakened in regard to agricultural education is well shown by the great increase of books on agricultural topics. Formerly the effort was to treat of the whole subject of agriculture and farm economy in a single small volume, and our libraries still contain some of those little books. In the organization of our Colleges of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts the greatest difficulty that beset the faculty in these institutions was the total absence of books on agriculture and horticulture that could be used as text books with the college classes. The result was that every professor was compelled to prepare his own lectures and to conduct the instruction along lines devised from time to time to meet the emergency. Out of this work there have grown up books in which various parts of scientific cropping are treated, and there is no longer any effort made to combine in one small volume all the matters that relate to cropping, stock breeding and feeding, farm drainage and soil manipulation; but the soil and its treatment and cropping have come to be considered as something separate and distinct from the animal husbandry of the farm.

While in a work of this kind methods of soil preparation and culture are of necessity treated, to some extent, the chief aim of the book will be to make plain so far as has been ascertained, the methods of supplying the manurial needs of crops, and especially to endeavor to do something towards encouraging a more judicious use of the commercial fertilizers than is common among farmers. Few northern farmers fully realize to what extent the southern farmer has come to rely upon commercial fertilizers for every crop he plants. And it is important that in the interest that is now being taken in the Central West in the use of commercial fertilizers, that the farmers be protected from making the mistakes that have proved disastrous to the southern farmer, and that they should be taught in the beginning of their use of these fertilizers, where and how they may be made profitable, and how to avoid the dangers of soil wasting that have followed hard upon the use of commercial fertilizers in the cotton states. The poorest farmers ond the best farmers use commercial fertilizers. The first-class dribbles them in small quantity under his sale crop, solely for the purpose of getting a little more to sell; the second class uses them in a far more liberal manner for the purpose of building up the soil and the development of its natural capacity. The first class of farmers simply use enough to add a little to what the land would do unaided, and thus get what the soil would do and all that the fertilizer did, and the result is that the soil is in a worse condition by reason of the application; and it is no wonder that the men who use these forms of plant food in this way have come to the conclusion that they are only stimulants.

The greatest educational influence of late years among farmers who have passed the years when they could have attended a college, has been the Farmers' Institutes. When these Institutes were first inaugaurated farmers as a class knew little about the chemistry of the fertilizers they used, and regarded that the best which smelled the worst. Since the Institutes and the Grange have been getting in their work there has been a wonderful change in this respect, and the farmer who does not know something about the chemical composition of the fertilizers he uses, and the nature of the elements entering into them, is as rare as one who did know these things was at one time. These educational influences have also brought about a change in other respects. Farmers, as a class, have now a greater respect for what they formerly ridiculed as "book farming," and today it is only the grossly ignorant among the farmers who fail to realize what scientific study and investigation have done for the farmer. Another educational influence that has been brought to bear upon the farmer is the Agricultural Experiment Station. The whole modern system of spraying for the prevention of fungous diseases in plants and to ward off the attacks of noxious insects, has been brought about through the work of the Experiment Stations, and on no subject of interest to the farmer have the Stations devoted more attention than to the study of the various forms of plant food sold as fertilizers, their composition and value.

Before the inauguration of these Stations the farmer was at the mercy of the compounder of fertilizers, and had no means for ascertaining their real value. With the inauguration of the Experiment Stations and their analyses of these mixtures came the passage of stricter laws regulating the sale of fertilizers and protecting not only the farmer, but the honest fertilizer manufacturer, from the frauds that were formerly so common. The result of all these influences is that farmers who never had the advantages of a scientific training have been taught to understand what is necessary in a good fertilizer, and are rapidly learning that they can make these mixtures themselves as easily as to buy them ready mixed, and can save money in so doing. Then, too, the result of the publication of the analyses of commercial fertilizers has had the effect of driving from the market inferior articles and of improving the general standard of the factory-made fertilizers, and in States having a good and well enforced fertilizer control, the farmers are now protected from rogues, and the honest manufacturers are not compelled to compete with them. We have urged the home mixing of fertilizers upon our farmers, not from any antagonism to the manufacturers of fertilizers, but because we know that in the thoughtless purchase of ready mixed articles, growers are continually buying what they do not need to buy, and getting mixtures poorly adapted to their soil and crops, though they may be manufactured with perfect accuracy and honesty. No one mixture will suit all parts of the same farm, or all the crops grown upon it, and the farmer will thus be compelled to buy various brands in order to get what he needs. But if he buys the materials and mixes them to suit his soils and crops he can buy the whole in larger quantity and at a lower price. The fact has more than once been demonstrated at the Experiment Stations, that one may buy at retail the various materials that enter into a commercial fertilizer, and save money from the price he would have to pay for factory mixed goods. This book, being written by a farmer, for the benefit of farmers, will advocate what its author believes to be the best interest of the farmer, without regard to what others may think of what we write. It will, as I have said, treat the subject of cropping and feeding crops from the standpoint of the practical farmer in full sympathy with the work of scientific investigation.