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WHAT SHALL WE DO
FOR FERTILIZERS
NEXT YEAR
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By
G. W. CARVER, M. S., AGR.
EXPERIMENT STATION
TUSKEGEE NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE
NOVEMBER, 1916
WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR FERTILIZERS
NEXT YEAR?
By G. W. Carver
I doubt if there is a single farmer in Alabama, and but
few throughout the South, who is not familiar with, and
indeed the majority, puzzled over the above question. And
why not, since potash is so high that it is out of the ques¬
tion, nitrate of soda but little better, and cotton seed sell¬
ing at $62.50 per ton and very scarce at that, and the meal
can well go in the above impossible list?
The results of 12 years' work on the Experiment Station
plats, and in the laboratory prove that we are allowing to go
to waste an almost unlimited supply of the very kind of
fertilizer the majority of our soils are most deficient in.
I mean muck from the swamps and leaves from the forest.
Three acres of our Experiment Station has had no com¬
mercial fertilizer put upon it for 12 years, but the follow¬
ing compost:
2-3 leaves from the woods and muck from the swamp
(muck is simply the rich earth from the swamp).
1-3 barnyard manure.
How to Make the Compost
Two loads of leaves and muck are taken, and spread out
in a pen. One load of barnyard manure is spread over this.
The pen is filled in this way. It is either rounded over like
a potato-hill, or a rough shed is put over it to turn the
excess of water, so as to prevent the fertilizing constituents
from washing out. It is allowed to stand this way until
spring.
When to Make the Compost
Begin your compost heap now; do not delay; let every
spare moment be put in in the woods raking up leaves or in
the swamps pilling up muck. Haul, and put in these pens.
Do not wait to get the barnyard manure—you can mix it in
afterward, or if you cannot get the barnyard manure at all,
the leaves and muck will pay you many times in the in¬
creased yield of crops.
How to Use
Prepare the land deep and thorough. Throw out rows
with a middle-burster or two-horse plow; put in the compost
at the rate of 20 tons per acre, 25 where the land is very
poor; plant right on top of this. Handle afterwards the
same as if any other fertilizer had been used.
Save all the wood ashes, waste lime, etc., etc., and mix
into this compost.
Results
As stated above, three acres of our experimental farm
has had no commercial fertilizer put upon it for 12 years.
The land has been continually cropped, but has increased in
fertility every year, both physically and chemically, on no
other fertilizer than muck compost and the proper rotation
of crops.
This year 282 pounds of lint cotton, 45 bushels of corn,
and 210 bushels of sweet potatoes were made per acre, with
no other fertilizer than the above compost.
Try this; it will take only one or two trials to convince
you that many thousands of dollars are being spent every
year here in the South for fertilizers that profit the user
very little, while Nature's choicest fertilizer is going to
waste.