RESTORING THE LAND

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 19, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 41.

RESTORING THE LAND.

REFERRING again to that important subject, “Back to the Land,” it is interesting to know that there is a way to restore the fertility of overworked grain lands. In the October Century Magazine, Mr. Gilbert H. Grosvenor discusses the subject, and describes how, by a process of inoculation, the nitrogen so necessary to productive grain land can be supplied to soil which has been robbed of its nitrogen by successive crops of wheat and other cereals. A current press despatch says:—

Probably the most pleasing thing about the whole matter is, the nitrogen germs so necessary to the soil’s productiveness are furnished free by the Agricultural Department of this government, the letters patent having been presented to the department by Prof. George T. Moore, in charge of the laboratory of plant physiology of the department, who discovered how to practically utilize nitrogen germs.

But Dr. Moore was not the real discoverer of the germs. It had been known for many years that the air we breathed contained all of the nitrogen so necessary to the soil, and it was known that certain plants, like the clover, bean, and pea, did not impoverish the soil as some of the grains did. It remained for Professor Nobbe, a German scientist, to discover, as Mr. Grosvenor declares, that the bean especially takes its nitrogen from the air and that it absorbs more than it needs, and actually enriches the soil with the surplus supply.

Then he found that all of these plants had bulbs, or round tubercles, or nodules, attached to the roots, as if an insect had bitten them. He dissected one of these bulbs, and found it filled with bacteria that worked incessantly, absorbing nitrogen from the air to feed the plant.

Then the professor successfully cultivated these bacteria, and a German company was actually formed to supply them to farmers in bottled form. They did not live because they had been too well fed by the professor, says Mr. Grosvenor, and hence were not used to working for themselves. In the soil they died. The company stopped manufacturing.

Professor Moore cultivated a self-reliant disposition in his nitrogen bacteria. He did not overfeed them and they began to seek their nitrogen food themselves. Having obtained permanent bacteria, he found a bit of cotton would soak up millions of them. He then dried it, and in this form it is sent to the farmer, who is directed to soak the cotton in a solution of water, granulated sugar, potassium phosphate, magnesium sulphate, and ammonia phosphate. The solution is then mixed with five times the quantity of earth and scattered over a barren field, inoculating it with nitrogen germs that multiply and cause bountiful crops. One small package, it is said, will inoculate from one to four acres.