For mixing lime with soil, take only 11½ ounces of soil to one of lime for the first mixture; for cowpea vines, four ounces of soil to one of vines, and only 1½ ounces of soil to one of manure. One ounce of each of these mixtures to five pounds of soil will give the right proportion of each to the acre, or, one ton of lime, five tons of cowpea vines, and ten tons of manure to the acre. After you have added the fertilizers to the soil, it is left standing in pans or boxes for several days, being watered with rain water or melted ice water and frequently stirred. Do not use well or hard water, for those contain lime or salts, only rain water. Moisten the soil at the end of a few days until it is in the best condition for planting seeds. You soon learn to judge this. Divide the soil in each pan into five equal parts and put one part in each of five wire baskets, pressing it down at the bottom and sides. After this is done, brush off the soil that has been forced through the mesh of the netting. The basket should be filled to within one-half inch from the top. The baskets are now ready for planting. A couple of days before planting, put wheat grains between moist cloths, cover with wet sand and place in a warm spot to start germination. Take from these sprouted seeds those that are of the same size and development, and plant six in a straight line in each basket, being careful to plant all to exactly the same depth. Then cover the soil in the basket about one-fourth inch deep with clean, dry sand, dip the whole basket, down as far as the rim you have already coated with paraffin, into melted paraffin; cool, and dip again and again until it is completely covered with hardened paraffin for about one-sixteenth of an inch, and you have nearly completed your task. See that the pots have the best possible conditions of light, temperature and moisture, as nearly as you can make it like what they would have in the field, being careful to keep all the baskets of one set together. Water them frequently. If you have weighed some of the baskets as soon as planted, you will know how much water to supply, for you must keep weight as close as possible to what it was at the beginning. Fifteen or twenty days are enough to show you what fertilizer your soil most needs, and you can then go ahead and get it ready for crops. This is a test solely for soil needs, not for plant requirements, so it is not necessary to grow the plants any longer than just to show which basket flourishes best. It holds good in the field as well as in the basket. One thing must be borne in mind, that weight must be accurate. If the farmer hasn’t time or patience probably his wife would make the test. She has time and patience for everything that is put upon her. CHAPTER XXVIII. MORE ABOUT FERTILIZERS.