Page:Notes on five years' experiments on hop manuring conducted at Golden Green, Hadlow, Tonbridge.djvu/20

18 restricted to one form of manuring. A hop farmer will naturally, and rightly, give his hops as much dung as his farm resources will supply; though I must say I have grave doubt as to the economy, under most circumstances, of buying town dung, unless on specially favourable terms as regards cost of conveyance. There is a large variety of other nitrogenous manures in the market, such as Peruvian and Damaraland guano, sulphate of ammonia, fish guano, dried blood, rape dust, furriers' refuse, horn shavings, hoof-parings, wood dust, shoddy, &c. All of these may, turn and turn about, be used for helping to maintain a stock of nitrogen in the soil, and the degree to which manures of this kind have been recently applied to any hop garden will naturally influence the grower in deciding as to the quantity of nitrate of soda he should use in conjunction with them, and also to some extent in deciding as to the date of its application.

Dressings of 8 cwt. and 10 cwt. per acre, such as we annually give to plots E and F, would be larger than would be applied where the land had been already dressed with dung or with other nitrogenous manures. It has been seen, however, that 6 cwt. of nitrate per acre did not prove too much on the main portion of our experimental field in the past season, although 20 loads of dung per acre were used, following a ton of fish guano and 4 cwt. of nitrate of soda per acre applied in the previous season. In our experience, therefore, even following recent liberal manuring with nitrogen in other forms, 6 cwt. of nitrate of soda per acre has not proved itself to be in any way deleterious to the quality of the produce in a dry season, although growth was naturally luxuriant; in fact, it gave the best result of all our plots. If asked for a general opinion as to the safe limit