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Sulphate Of Ammonia

Categories: COMMERCIAL SOURCES OF PLANT-FOOD

This is a by-product in the manufacture of coke

and also of illuminating gas. Hunt estimates that the amount of

nitrogen lost annually in Pennsylvania's coke industry would be

sufficient, if recovered by proper type of ovens, to furnish every acre

of land under cultivation in the state with four fifths of all the

nitrogen needed to keep it in a maximum state of fertility.



Sulphate of ammonia contains abou
20 per cent of nitrogen, which is in

a quite available form. It has a tendency to exhaust the lime in the

soil, producing an acid condition. Some plats in the fertilizer

experiment at the Pennsylvania station have received their nitrogen in

the form of sulphate of ammonia for 30 years, and are now in such acid

condition that no crops thrive upon them. The corrective, of course, is

lime, and if ammonium sulphate were somewhat lower in price, its use

would be profitable, justifying cost of correction of acidity if it

should occur. It is used by manufacturers of commercial fertilizers,

and is well adapted to mixtures on account of its physical condition.



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