OCR Text |
Show Good Soil Made Better by Proper Fertilizer Usage Assuming that the soil is in good tilth, that it is well drained and that any undue acidity or alkalinity al-kalinity has been corrected, we are then in a position to get full benefit from recommended applications appli-cations of chemical fertilizers. For fertilizers serve not only as sources of the mineral nutrients and nitrogen required by crop plants but of those required by the soil micro-organisms as well. Nitrogen and phosphorous are especially important constituents of their bodies. Crop residues are rapidly changed into compost when nitrogen is added, assuming assum-ing that phosphorous and other required food elements are present pres-ent in ample amounts in the soil. Use of fertilizers is the starting start-ing point wi th any - unproductive soil, whether farm, lawn or garden. gar-den. Fertilization provides a means of adding organic matter to all soils, improving their physical phys-ical properties, and partially overcoming ov-ercoming drouth effects. For fertilizer fer-tilizer means bigger crops, deeper root systems and larger amounts of crop residues to be made into organic matter. There are millions of acres of farmed land that are naturally ' in good physical condition without with-out any effort on the part of man. This is true of many of the sands and sandy loam on the coastal plain that extends from Massachusetts Massa-chusetts to Texas, including virtually vir-tually the whole state of Florida, except for the Everglades. Un-productivity Un-productivity of much of this land is due almost entirely to lack of available nutrients or to serious imbalance among them. Under such conditions, except where drainage is a major problem, a given field can be brought to a high state of productivity in one day, merely by applying the necessary nec-essary lime and fertilizer. |