The story of a loaf of bread / by T. B. Wood.

  • Thomas Barlow Wood
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The story of a loaf of bread / by T. B. Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by the soil, it is still far from independent of a proper supply of minerals. A further experiment on this point showed that minerals are not used up by the crop to which they are applied, and that any excess left over remains in the soil for next year. This is not the case with nitrogenous manures. What¬ ever is left over from one crop is washed out of the soil by the winter rains, and lost. Translated into farm practice these results mean that nitrogenous manures should be applied direct to the wheat crop, but that wheat may as a rule be trusted to get all the minerals it wants from the phosphate and potash applied directly to other crops which are specially dependent on an abundant supply of these sub¬ stances. At Rothamsted, Lawes and Gilbert adopted the practice of growing wheat continuously on the same land year after year in order to find out as quickly as possible the manurial peculiarities of the crop. This however is not the general system of the British farmer, but it has been carried out with commercial success by Air Prout of Sawbridgeworth in Hertford¬ shire. The Sawbridgeworth farm is heavy land on the London clay. Air Prout’s system was to cultivate the land by steam power, to manure on the lines suggested by the Rothamsted experiments, and to sell both grain and straw. Wheat was grown continuously year after year until the soil became infested with weeds, when
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