Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1916 — IS YOUR SOIL SICK? [ARTICLE]

IS YOUR SOIL SICK?

No one would think of working a sick horse, yet there are farmers in almost every community who are continuing to work their sick soils, and with the usual result of poor crops. Do you know that the trouble with the average soil is that it is sour? By this is meant that it is acid. In other words it has a trouble akin to colic or sour stomach in man or green apple colic so common among the younger generation in the early summer. None of our crops will grow to any success on sour soil. It works bad, breaks up cloddy and the clods cannot be mashed with anything less than a. maul. Fertilizing will help some, and lime Is the corrective agent, but for the best results both should be used. With wheat, when limestone and fertilizer are used on the same land the yield, is larger than when either one of these is used alone. To test your soil for acidity, get a nickel’s worth of blue litmus paper from the drug store. Get a ball of the soil while it is moist and break It in halves. Place a strip of the paper on the one half then cover it , with the other, pressing them down j tightly and leave it this way for ! about five minutes. Then break the ball and look at the paper. If it has ' turned red your soil is sour, and it is high time that the use of lime be I made a practice.