ON NITROGEN.

South Canterbury Times, Volume XV, Issue 2068, 8 November 1879, Page 2

ON NITROGEN.

The report of the N. J. State Board of Agriculture for 1878, contains, within convenient space, a large amount of useful material. Mr Chas. V. Napes contributes an article on fertilizers in the past and present, which supplies a variety of suggestions and subjects of thought. Of all the many problems which agricultural chemistry is now investigating, perhaps no other one is more important to the future welfare of our farming than that of the nitrogen supply. This is the costliest ingredient of our fertilizers. We are paying, and usually with profit, from 15 to 30 cents per pound for it in our standard fertilizers, such as guano, fish ammoniated superphosphates, nitrate of soda, and other special crop fertilizers. And yet the very soils on which nitrogen is used with profit, often contain thousands of pounds in every acre within reach of the roots of plants, but in inert forms so that crops can not use it, and fail for lack of it. A great deal of the nitrogen applied in fertilizers runs to waste in one way or another before the crop gets it, or lies dormant in the soil. Hence the question how to apply nitrogen so as to make the most of it is, as Mr Lawes says, a most importune one.

For more than thirty years Mr Lawes has been devoting a considerable portion of his I'iU'iii, and large sums of

money, often as ranch as 15,000 dols in a single year, to experiments. Ho has raised grass, wheat, barley, clover roots, and other crops with different fertilizers, in some cases using the same fertilizers for the same crop on the same plots year after year. Some of the results of these experiments continued through nearly one-third of a century he details to us here. The particular question is "What becomes of the nitrogen applied in the manure ? Where he has used dung at the rate of 14 tons per acre every year for barley, the crop has had at its disposal, more than four times as much nitrogen as it used. Where has the rest gone ? There are several ways to account for it. Much stays and accumulates in the ground. G-rass land manured in this way for eight years in succession, had stored up enough nitrogen and other ingredients of plant food to keep up the full yield for live years longer, and now, after fifteen years cropping since any manure has been applied, the effect of the old supply still remains. On an other field where 14 tons of dung were applied every year to barley, analysis implied that the nitrogen accumulated in the soil at the rate of about 100 lbs per acre annually.

But with artificial manures the case is somewhat different Nitrogen in Sulphate of Ammonia, and in Nitrate of Soda, is all ready to act at once. Onefourth as much as is found in dung supplied, brings as good crops. But, the nitrogen in these chemical fertilizers does not accumulate in the soil like that in dung. Part is recovered in the crop, and the rest is lost, though some doubtless enters into inert combinations in the soil. Much is washed away by drainage waters. Some probably escapes in the free state into the air. though Mr Lawes does not dwell upon this source of loss in his letter. The nitrogen in dung is subject to loss in the same way, but does not waste so fast.

One lesson from all this is, that dung acts slowly and lasts a great while, but fetilizers generally bring quicker returns and arc sooner spent. Another lesson is that the farmer ought to do his best to economize the materials he has on hand in his soil, If he can help his crops to utilize the inert nitrogen "within reach of the roots, that will be better than to buy it at high cost in commercial fertilizers, or apply large quantities of dung, to store away more. Choice of the right crops, such as clover and probably to some exrent corn, use of lime and ashes, and proper tillage, are the means for this economizing of the nitrogen in the soil. —'•American Agriculturist.”