The Fertilizer Question

THE FERTILIZER question 

There is one thing, however, that must not be ignored, and that is that you must feed the soil after each crop has been taken out and before another one has been put in, for you can't count on to growing good cabbage when the corn has taken sufficient food from the earth to enable it to grow a stalk six feet tall and mature two to six ears of corn ! 

Presume you have had a vegetable garden in the constant spot for countless years, and have given  insufficient fertilizer in that time, say, perhaps, nothing but manure, and you are speculating why your vegetables do not grow as rapidly and mature as perfectly as formerly.

 Could you absolve that garden for one summer and sow it with cow-peas, soy beans or red clover, and plow that crop under in the autumn? 

These three varieties of plants (and there are many more like them) gather great quantities of nitrogen from the air. They have very long roots, and some acquire little knobs, real nitrogen supplies, that store away the nitrogen which the leaves draw from the atmosphere, so improveing your soil no end. 

Nitrogen is the most crucial and costly material to secure in fertilizer form, and is greatly sought after; it is utilized not only to establish quickly such crops as lettuce, but to force for a more lengthen period corn, beans, celery, etc. 

The readily- soluble chemicals, such as nitrate of soda, are of course exceptional, as they are quickly exploited by the plants, but because of their easy solubility they are soon washed away by rains. 

Furthermore, they require moisture to render them accessible. The nitrogen storers are utilized to a greater extent each year. Their power is to absorb nitrogen from the air and to disseminate it throughout the soil through the mechanism of their roots. 

When the stalks of these crops are cultivated in, the nitrogen that they have gathered will be surrendered as the plants decay- It is the cheapest way to purchase nitrogen.