Just 25-cents when it was published, the May 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics is filled with advertisements and articles from a very different era. (You can view an online copy of the magazine here.) One article, titled “Hungry Plants Guide the Ore Prospector (pp. 130-133),” begins like this: “Flowers make a tireless search for valuable…
Known as nature’s fertilizer, legumes like peas, beans and clovers have long been used as natural nitrogen fixers. Also referred to as ‘green manure,’ legumes are typically planted as rotational crops to help feed the soil organically. At the most basic biological level, legumes attract soil-dwelling bacteria called rhizobia to their roots and ‘invite’ them inside…
