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GOOD Morning to you all again, my first question to you today is, - did you pray, and thank God for walking up, think about it, in one year you wake up 365 times, or every day for 12 months, or 52 weeks a year or seven days a week, have you ever stopped to think who allows this to happen, it is our creator and father in heaven, friends without God in our lives we can do nothing. Our father sacrificed his only son Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary , he shed his blood for our sins. He was beaten, pierced and crucified for you and he Jesus said-knock and the door will open, seek and you will find, ask and it will be given. Our Lords words can be trusted. It is so easy to let our relationship with the Lord to be influenced by the behavior of others, but whatever the conflicting voices that surround us say we must keep hearing the saviors clear command- “you follow me” lets pause for a moment: Jesus calls us over the tumult of our life's wild, restless sea, day by day his sweet voice soundeth saying “ Christians, follow me.” To find your way through life, follow Jesus.

Our topic, As I said last week we will look at the individual nutrients closely, the first one is nitrogen. Because it is more deficient in most cases than others, nitrogen is the most important nutrient for most crops, and for a number of reasons it is also the most difficult one to apply in the correct quantity. More than any other nutrients, nitrogen controls the rate of growth of crops. The amount of leaf produced and the stage of maturity. A deficiency or maybe excess and drastically affect crop yield. Plants short of nitrogen are pale in color and the old leaves tend to be even paler than the young leaves.

The rate of growth is poor and plants mature prematurely. When nitrogen is excessive. Plants are very dark green, leafy and slow to mature. Most of the soils nitrogen is contained in organic matter, both fresh and humidified. There are negligible amounts in the geological materials from which the soil is formed, apart from the peaty types of soils which consist mainly of organic matter, nearly all the soil organic matter and the nitrogen is contained in the top soil. Every season part of this organic nitrogen is broken down by numerous soil bacteria and other micro-organism to the available “inorganic” nitrate form which plants can absorb. This process takes place in two main stages. The organic nitrogen is first converted into ammonia which is then changed to nitrate by nitrifying bacteria, thus both ammonia and nitrate, constituents of ammonium nitrate, the commonest nitrogen fertilizer, occur naturally in soils. Addition of nitrogen to soils.

Apart from applications in fertilizers, nitrogen is added to the soil by natural processes. The most important of these is the “fixation” of atmospheric nitrogen by bacteria in the nodules of leguminous plants such as clovers, lucerne, peas, beans and peanut. Most legumes can obtain all the nitrogen they need in this way and the root residues eventually add nitrogen to the soil. Other types of bacteria also add small amounts of nitrogen. Rain contains a very small amount of nitrate formed by the action of lightning on the nitrogen and oxygen in the air, and ammonia in the air originating from industrial pollution adds some nitrogen to the soil also. The amount of nitrate formed by microbial action during the growing season depends upon the quantity of soil organic matter and also on the proportion of nitrogen it contains. Both of these depend upon the previous cropping and the soil type. Under continuous arable cropping soil organic matter levels are inevitably lowered. In arable soils less nitrogen is released by soil-micro-organisms so more fertilizer nitrogen is required for optimum yield. Crops grown after straw crops generally need more nitrogen than after other crops because the stubble is low in nitrogen and high in carbon. The organisms breaking down the stubble need nitrogen as well as carbon. Because there is insufficient in the stubble for their needs, they take nitrogen from the soil and so complete with the crop.

Nitrate nitrogen is rarely leached from the soil during the growing season except on coarse sandy soils or in high rainfall areas. However, nitrate left in the soil in the latter part of the year will be lost during the rainy season. Since the nitrogen requirements of crops are generally and greatly affected by the weather during the growing season which cannot be predicted it is inevitable that even the most precise recommendations will be high for some years and low for others.

Well friends I hope you found this interesting so far. There so much technical information concerning nitrogen, I have only touched the surface. There is so much more to write about, So I will finish here on nitrogen, and continue next week with phosphorus. Take care see you next week.