Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1914 — ROCK PHOSPHATE RESULTS Work of County Agent in Building Up Soils. [ARTICLE]

ROCK PHOSPHATE RESULTS Work of County Agent in Building Up Soils.

[National Crop Improvement Service.] Wherever I have found phosphate rock applied under suitable conditions, the returns have been very profitable. Last week W. H. B. McCormick, of Hopedale, showed me a field of hilly land on which he had applied phosphate rock five years ago to young cloves. The next crop of clover showed a very marked increase in growth and the corn crop following was over sixty bushels per acre, which was the best that season in the neighborhood on that character of land. The effect of the phosphate has been evident every year and now after five years the clover is much, heavier in that part of the field where.phosphate rock had been applied. He applied some to a field which is now in oatc and the oats look considerable heavier on that part of the field. H. S. Griesemer, of Hopedale, showed me a field, where he applied ground phosphate rock five years and six years ago to the north twenty acres of one forty. This year the corn on that half of the field looks considerably taller and darker in color arid promises to make a much heavier crop. This is more noteworthy considering that the results from phosphate show pririciply in the grain. Ralph Alien’s big yield or wheat, forty bushels to the acre on forty acres, is the talk of the southern part of the county and that was on a field where phosphate rock had been applied in 1910. So great a yield into dry a season is certainly sufficient evidence of the benefit secured from this .material. W. H. Baldwin, of Delavan, has greatly increased the crop production of his farm in the last ten years by rotating of crops, clover and live stock. Much of the land in Tazewell county needs only clover and the cheapest kind of phosphate rock, to make it yield as much as the richest land in the world. It has everything else that is required. When we raise clover and put phosphate rock on the land we make the conditions ideal. lhe fact that the benefits shown for years after the application is sufficient evidence of the wisdom of this method of increasing the crops.— E. T. Robbins, Agent, Tazewell County, I 1L —- ' -