Abstract
WHEN on active service in France in 1918 I had, partly as a hobby and partly for food supplies, a garden on the site of an old brickyard. The land had been waste land for certainly three years, and I believe more. It received a light dressing of dung in February and was dug up in that month; seeds were got in March. In April or May the land received by chance a light top-dressing of a mixture of charcoal and brick-earth impregnated with potassium carbonate and hexamethylene tetramine. The crops obtained were, in my opinion, abnormally good, and much better than those obtained by some French gardeners on cultivated gardens near by. The chief crops grown were potatoes, dwarf peas, and dwarf beans; the two last gave the best results in the order named. It is not asserted that the top-dressing brought about this result, as the history of the soil is necessarily rather obscure; and as it was not designed as a scientific experiment there was no control plot, but it seems improbable that the small amounts of nitrogen and potassium supplied by it could have made the garden much better than neighbouring ones.
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KNOWLES, F. A Possible Case of Partial Sterilisation in Soil. Nature 103, 205 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/103205a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/103205a0
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