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.