FARMYARD MANURE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 741, 30 January 1915, Page 3

FARMYARD MANURE.

Of a ton of farmyard manure about three-fourths are water, says an exchange. It contains also 551b to 651b of asb, and about 501b of organic matter —that is to say, matter that can be driven off by burning. Except for its mechanical and indirect beneßt to the soil, nearly all the manurial value is due to the nitrogen which is in it; in other words, all the actual plant food in the large mass of organic matter applied to the Boil in dressinga of farmyard manure is the nitrogen contained in it. Now a ton of farmyard manure rarely contains more than 10 to 121b of nitrogen, mainly in an organic form, and such nitrogen only becomes useful for plant food after it has been converted into nitrates by a process more or less slow and interrupted, dependent upon the activity of the bacteria in the soil.

Thiß is not intended to depreciate the very valuable quality of manure in maintaining soil fertility, but to show the great use that can be obtained from supplementing the bulky manure by fertilisers which contain in a Bmall compass large quantities of direct plant food. One still|occasionally hears of farmers who refuse to use artificials because they are not "natural." On such a principle the farmer should refuse to give oil cakes to his stock aB they are no more natural. It may be said that all fertilisers, nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, Peruvian guano, potash salts and phosphates are just as much a natural food as farmyard manure, but in more concentrated form. When put in the ground they get incorporated with the soil, and are converted into a state to be assimilated by the plant by the same natural process as farmyard manure.