Common Salt

Chloride of sodium, applied in the spring at the rate of twenty bushels per acre, has been found very beneficial to asparagus, broad beans, lettuces, onions, carrots, pars-neps, potatoes, and beets. Indeed its properties are so generally useful, not only as promoting fertility, but as destroying slugs, etc, that it is a good plan to sow the whole garden every March with this manure, at the rate above specified. The flower garden is included in this recommendation; for some of the best practical gardeners recommend it for the stock, hyacinth, amaryllis, ixia, anemone, colchicum, narcissus, ranunculus, Sec.; and in the fruit garden it has been found beneficial to almost every one of its tenants, especially the cherry and apple. On lawns and walks it helps to drive away worms, and to destroy moss.

Ammonia

The salts of ammonia are highly stimulating, and afford by their ready decomposition, abundant food to plants. The dungs of animals are fertilizing exactly in proportion to the amount of ammonia in them. The only care required is not to apply them too abundantly. Half an ounce to each gallon of water, given at the most twice a week, is a good recipe for all the am-moniacal salts. The ammoniacal gas liquor at the rate of one pint to two gallons of water, is highly beneficial to spinach and grass.-Card. Chron.

Phosphate of Ammonia has been applied with advantage to cress.

Sulphate Of Ammonia

This, and the nitrate of ammonia, have proved beneficial to potatoes in Scotland. A writer in the Floricultural Cabinet says, that having obtained a pailful of gas liquor, he diluted it with water, and added some sulphuric acid, thus forming a solution of sulphate of ammonia, and watered with it in October, a bed (twenty feet long by four feet two inches wide) destined to be planted with Ranunculuses. They bloomed very strong in this bed, some of the flower-stems were two feet high ; the blooms averaging between three and four inches in diameter; the roots also lifted large and clean.-Flor. Cab.

Chalk may be applied in large quantities, twenty or thirty tons per acre, to render a light siliceous soil more retentive or a heavy soil more open. Its basis, lime, enters into the composition of most plants in some state of combination. It is very far from immaterial where this mineral is obtained from to improve the staple of our soils. Those chalks which are merely carbonate of lime, with a trace of oxide of iron, are unexceptionable; but there are some which contain phosphate of lime, and these are very much to be preferred. Mr. Brande states the chalk of Brighton to be thus constituted.

Carbonate of lime . . 98.57.

-----magnesia . 0..38.

Phosphate of lime . . 0.11 Oxides of iron and manganese 0.14 Alumina and silica . . 0.80.

If the chalk is to be burnt into lime before, it is applied, care should be taken that it does not contain, like some of the Yorkshire chalks, a large proportion of carbonate of magnesia. Magnesia remains long in a caustic state, and has been found injurious to the plants to which it has been applied.

Chloride of Lime gradually gives out a portion of its chlorine, and is converted into muriate of lime, a very deliquescing salt, which can hardly exist in any soil, however light, without keeping it moist; and its nauseous odour may be found to keep off the attacks of the fly, and other vermin. A solution containing one ounce in five gallons of water, is said to destroy the aphis and the caterpillar, if poured over the trees they infest.

Gas Lime is a hydro-sulphuret of lime, with a little ammonia. It is an excellent manure, especially to cabbages, turnips, cauliflowers, and brocoli, dug in at the time of planting or sowing. If sown over the surface at the time of inserting the crop, at the rate of twenty bushels per acre, it will effectually drive away the turnip-fly, slug, etc.

Gypsum, or Plaster of Paris, is sulphate of lime, composed of:

Sulphuric acid ... 43

Lime ..... 33

Water .... 22

It has been found very useful as a top dressing to lawns, and dug in for turnips and potatoes. Three hundred weight per acre is abundance.

Nitrates of Potash (Saltpetre), and of Soda (Cubic Petre), have been found beneficial to carrots, cabbages, and lawns. One pound to a square rod of ground is a sufficient quantity. Both these nitrates have been found beneficial to potatoes in Scotland. Mr. Murray says that, from 1810 down to the present time, he has been in the habit of watering pinks and carnations with solutions of these two nitrates, and the benefit has been uniform and eminent in promoting their luxuriance. - Gard. Gaz.

They have also been given in solution with great benefit to lettuces, celery, fuchsias, and dahlias. One pound to twelve gallons of water. Nitrate of Soda destroys slugs.

Phosphate Of Lime

The importance of bones and other manures containing phosphoric salts as a general manure, 34 is further sustained by the experiments of Dr. Jackson, the American chemist. He found phosphates in peas and beans of various kinds, in pumpkin seeds, chestnuts, potatoes, raspberries, and turnips. See Bones.

Super-Phosphate Of Lime

Chrysanthemums were much increased in vigour when watered with a solution of this salt in the Chiswick Garden, at the end of July. It is thought, if the application had been made earlier, the benefit would have been still more marked. Professor Lindley says this salt seems to have a beneficial effect on most plants, and that it may be applied in different proportions without the least risk of injuring the plants. - Gard. Chron.

Heaths appear to like it. The best practical mode of obtaining super-phosphate of lime for manure, is to pour one pound of sulphuric acid, mixed with one pound of water, upon each two pounds of bone dust, allowing the mixture a week to complete the decomposition. Sulphate of lime and superphosphate of lime are the result. The Duke of Richmond and others have tried this with very great success upon turnips. It being in a liquid form, it must be mixed with earth to facilitate its application, or else be applied through the rose of a watering-pot.