Glasshouse Research

Abstract

THE annual report of the Experimental and Research Station at Cheshunt always sets forth a crop of useful results ; but the latest one, which is for 1947 (the Station, Turner's Hill, Cheshunt, Herts ; 1948), provides the answers to many questions on glasshouse culture. J. Littlewood and O. Owen publish the results of extensive experiments on the relation between the amounts of plant nutrients in the soil and those in the plant, with particular reference to methods of soil extraction used in advisory analyses. They conclude that extractions for potash with N/2 acetic acid, and for phosphoric acid with distilled water, give the most practically useful results. This is important ; but even more urgent is their insistence on the determination of total nitrogen for advisory purposes, and it is impossible not to agree most strongly with this conclusion. O. Owen and G. W. Winsor have also studied in detail the question of nitrification in glasshouse soils. Farmyard manure is now scarce, and O. Owen has a useful paper on the use of sodium alginate as a substitute for it in tomato composts. The preliminary trials show that it is quite satisfactory.