A Fertility Program for Celery Production


 DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENTAL PLOTS
 The Brown Company, at Shawano Farms, cooperated with the
Everglades Experiment Station over a two-year period (1930-32)
in a comprehensive study of the use of fertilizers for celery
production on sawgrass peat lands. The experimental area
(Area 1 of this report) was located in the southeast corner of
Lot 1 of Section 22 and in the north end of Section 21. This
land had been plowed for the first time in January 1926 and had
been planted successively to potatoes and three crops of peanuts.
During this period the total amount of chemicals which had
been applied to the area as either fertilizers or dusts amounted
to 112.5 pounds of copper sulfate and 12 pounds of zinc sulfate
per acre. No other materials had ever been added.
 Sixty-six different fertility treatments were tested upon this
area. Each was used on four separate 1/75 acre plots so scat-
tered through the field that averages of the four plots of any
treatment could be compared to similar averages of other treat-
ments. Tested in these treatments were the influence of the
composition of the fertilizer mixture, the source of the various
fertilizer ingredients, and different methods, time and rate per
acre of fertilizer applications.
 Experimental Area 2 was located in Section A of the north-
west sector at the Everglades Experiment Station at Belle Glade.
Originally this land was covered with native sawgrass but after
the excavation of the main canal elder came in on the disturbed
area along the banks of the canal. In June 1924 this land was
ditched, and at this time most of the area was under a heavy
growth of elder, which extended to the native sawgrass in an

 Fig. 3.-A field view across the experimental plots in one of the experimental areas.