CHAPTER XXII[ToC]
Commercial Fertilizers—continued
MIXED FERTILIZERS
What they are.
There are a large number of business concerns in the country which buy the raw materials described in Chapter XXI, mix them in various proportions, and sell the product as mixed or manufactured fertilizers. If these mixtures contain the three important plant foods, nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, they are sometimes called "complete" manures or fertilizers. In some parts of the country all commercial fertilizers are called "guano."
Many brands.
These raw materials are mixed in many different proportions and many dealers have special brands for special crops. There are consequently large numbers of brands of fertilizers which vary in the amounts, proportions and availability of the plant foods they contain. For instance, in 1903, twenty-three fertilizer manufacturers offered for sale ninety-six different brands in the State of Rhode Island. In Missouri one hundred and ten brands, made by sixteen different manufacturers, were offered for sale. Eighty-three manufacturers placed six hundred and forty-four brands on the market in New York State during the same year. Of one hundred and twenty brands registered for sale in Vermont in the spring of 1904, there were seventeen mixtures for corn and thirty-four for potatoes.
The result of this is more or less confusion on the part of the farmer in purchasing fertilizers, and with many a farmer it is a lottery as to whether or not he is buying what his crop or his soil needs.
Some of the manufacturers are not above using poor, low grade, raw materials in making these mixtures.
This means that the farmer should make himself familiar with the subject of fertilizers if he desires to use them intelligently and economically.