In preparing and enriching the soil, and especially in subsequent cultivation, concentrated fertilizers are very useful and often essential. In dealing with this subject, however, I think we tread upon uncertain ground. There is a great deal of apparent accuracy of figures and analyses, carried carefully into decimals, but a wonderful deal of vagueness, uncertainty, and contradiction in the experiences and minds of cultivators.
It is well known that many commercial fertilizers are scandalously adulterated, and those who have suffered from frauds are hostile to the entire class. In their strong prejudice, they will neither discriminate nor investigate. There are others who associate everything having a chemical sound with "book farming," and therefore dismiss the whole subject with a sniff of contempt. This clique of horticulturists is rapidly diminishing, however, for the fruit grower who does not read is like the lawyer who tries to practice with barely a knowledge of the few laws revealed by a limited experience. In contrast, there are others who read and theorize too exclusively, and are inclined to assert that concentrated fertilizers supersede all others. They scout the muck swamp, the compost heap, and even the barnyard, as old-fashioned, cumbrous methods of bringing to the soil, in tons of useless matter, the essentials which they can deliver in a few sacks or barrels. On paper, they are scientific and accurate. The crop you wish to raise has constituents in certain proportions. Supply these, they say, and you have the chemical compound, or crop. A field or garden, however, is not a sheet of blank paper, but a combination at which nature has been at work, and left full of obscurities. The results which the agricultural chemist predicted so confidently do not always follow, as they ought. Nature is often very indifferent to learned authorities.
There is yet another class—a large one, too—who regard these fertilizers as they do the drugs of an apothecary. They occasionally give their land a dose of them as they take medicine themselves, when indisposed or imagining themselves so. In either case there is almost entire ignorance of the nature of the compound or of definite reasons for its usefulness. Both the man and the field were "run down," and some one said that this, that, or the other thing was good. Therefore it was tried. Such haphazard action is certainly not the surest method of securing health or fertility.
In no other department of horticulture is there more room for common-sense, accurate knowledge, skill, and good management, than in the use of all kinds of fertilizers, and, in my judgment, close and continued observation is worth volumes of theory. The proper enrichment of the soil is the very cornerstone of success, and more fail at this point than at any other. While I do not believe that accurate and complete directions for the treatment of every soil can be written, it is undoubtedly true that certain correct principles can be laid down, and information, suggestion, and records of experience given which will be very useful. With such data to start with, the intelligent cultivator can work out the problem of success in the peculiar conditions of his own farm or garden.
It must be true that land designed for strawberries requires those constituents which are shown to compose the plant and fruit, and that the presence of each one in the soil should be in proportion to the demand for it. It is also equally plain that the supply of these essential elements should be kept up in continued cultivation. Therefore, the question naturally arises, what are strawberry plants and fruit made of? Modern wine, we know, can be made without any grape juice whatever, but as Nature compounds strawberries in the open sunlight, instead of in back rooms and cellars, she insists on all the proper ingredients before she will form the required combination.
"The Country Gentleman" gives a very interesting letter from Prof. S. W. Johnson, of the Connecticut Experiment Station, containing the following careful analysis made by J. Isidore Pierre, a French writer. "Pierre," says the professor, "gives a statement of the composition, exclusive of water, of the total yield per hectare of fruit, taken up to June 30, and of leaves, stems and runners, taken up to the middle of August. These results, calculated in pounds per acre, are the following (the plants contained 62.3 per cent of water and fruit 90 per cent):
Composition of the water-free strawberry crop (except roots), at the middle of August, in pounds per acre, according to Pierre:
Plants Fruits Totals
Organic matter, exclusive of nitrogen 4268.4 1053.5 5321.9
Nitrogen 88.5 16.0 104.5
Silica, iron and manganese oxides 43.3 1.5/3.8 48.6
Phosphoric acid 35.3 5.4 40.7
Lime 102.7 7.9 110.6
Magnesia 16.1 .7 16.8
Potash 89.1 19.7 108.8
Soda 6.4 .9 7.3
Other matters 120.9 8.8 129.7
Dry substance 4770.7 1118.2 5888.9"
These are the constituents that, to start with, must be in the soil, and which must be kept there. This array of what to many are but obscure chemicals need not cause misgivings, since in most instances nature has stored them in the virgin soil in abundant proportions. Even in well-worn, long cultivated fields, some of them may exist in sufficient quantity. Therefore, buying a special fertilizer is often like carrying coals to Newcastle. Useless expenditure may be incurred, also, by supplying some, but not all, of the essential ingredients. A farmer applied six hundred pounds of superphosphate to a plat of corn-land, and three hundred pounds to an adjacent plat wherein the conditions were the same. The yield of the first plat was scarcely in excess of that of the second, and in neither case was there a sufficient increase to repay for the fertilizer. It does not follow that the man used an adulterated and worthless article. Analysis shows that corn needs nitrogen and potash in large proportions; and if these had been employed with the superphosphate, the result probably would have been very different. Superphosphate contains nitrogen, but not in sufficient degree. These considerations bring us to the sound conclusion that in enriching our land it would be wise to use complete fertilizers as far as possible; that is, manures containing all, or nearly all, the essential ingredients of the strawberry plant and fruit. If we could always know just what elements are lacking in our soils, we could merely supply these; but frequent analyses are expensive, and often misleading, at best. The safest plan is always to keep within reach of the plants the food we know they require, and the roots, with unerring instinct, will attend to the proportions. Hence the value of barnyard manure in the estimation of plain common-sense. A sensible writer has clearly shown that from twenty-three cows and five horses, if proper absorbents are used, $5.87 worth of nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid can be obtained every twenty-four hours, estimating these vitally important elements of plant-food at their wholesale valuation. In addition, there are the other constituents of the yard manure which, if not so valuable, are still very useful. To permit the waste of any fertilizer that can be saved or made upon our places, and then buy the same thing with the chance of being cheated, is thus shown to be wretched economy. Commercial fertilizers can never supersede the compost heap, into which should go everything which will enable us to place in the soil organic matter and the other elements that were given in the analysis; and if all the sewage and waste of the dwelling and the products of the stable, stys and poultry-house were well composted with muck, sod, leaves, or even common earth, and used liberally, magnificent and continued crops of strawberries could be raised from nearly all soils.