Plant Magic

"Is this okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"This mill was just used to grind bones. Isn't it dirty to grind flour without washing it after grinding bones?"

"It's fine. Anyway, the flour we grind will be eaten by the town's masters."

Being the mill supervisor was a very respectable position in the territory. It had high income, high status, and farmers would call him "Mister" when they saw him.

So, after the mill supervisor of Chestnut Village was dismissed on the spot by the Young Master and appointed as the compost yard materials collector, his wife chased him through the village with a pitchfork.

Inside the mill, Frederick scooped up a spoonful of bone meal with a wooden spoon and studied it for a while before going outside to the open-air stove.

There were three stoves here, each with a large pot big enough to stew Frederick in.

The villagers were putting the collected broken bones and some mussel shells and snail shells into the left pot, then adding a large amount of plant ash and water, preparing to boil the bones.

The bones in the middle pot had been boiling for a while. Someone was skimming off the rendered fat and adding more water to prevent it from burning dry.

The stove's flue had been converted into a drying bed like a heated brick bed. The defatted bones were placed there to dry. Once completely dry, they were collected and sent to the mill to be ground into powder.

Because the finer the bone meal, the better the fertilizer effect, the coarse bone fragments that were sifted after the first grinding were ground a second time after being passed through a water-powered sieve.

Frederick watched for a while, thinking that using a stone mill to grind bone meal was inconvenient. He decided to point out the ball mill later. Lining the wooden barrel with iron sheets would increase its lifespan, and using large pebbles instead of steel balls would do the job.

He turned to ask the village chief beside him, "Are there enough bones?"

The village chief bowed and replied, "There are enough for now, but it's hard to say about the future. We plan to buy from other territories."

Frederick softly hummed in response.

Currently, farmers valued nitrogen fertilizers like compost and green manure, and they had some understanding of potassium fertilizer from plant ash but didn't attach enough importance to it. As for phosphorus fertilizer, it was just bones casually mixed into the compost.

Now, Professor Matthias from Weissenburg University, inspired by Frederick, had begun to focus on compound fertilizers, increasing the importance of phosphorus fertilizer.

The problem was that the current per capita meat consumption was too low, so there weren't enough bones to make bone meal.

Blood meal faced the same problem.

In the pot on the right side of the stove, collected animal blood was being boiled. After it dispersed, quicklime was added at a ratio of 20 kg of quicklime per 100 kg of blood, while stirring rapidly. When it turned blackish-brown, it was taken out and dried in the sun or baked, and finally ground into powder.

Before planting wheat, wetting the wheat seeds first and then mixing them with blood meal at 4% of the seed weight could increase yield by 10% or even 20%.

Bones could be collected as waste from other places, but the raw material for blood meal was troublesome.

Today, news spread that Baron Weissen was buying large quantities of blood. Maybe tomorrow, there would be Onee-san heroes or similar characters coming to farm bosses. They needed to prepare a large amount of Acid Slime.

Not to mention issues like blood sausage being a common food for villagers and the difficulty of storing blood meal for a long time.

To solve the raw material problem, they had to vigorously develop animal husbandry. Chemical fertilizers were out of the question for now, at most they could get some potassium nitrate.

Urea gypsum was also out of the question. This type of fertilizer was acidic, and the soil here was mainly acidic, adding it in would be like dipping dumplings.

Frederick came to the edge of the field, where the autumn planting was to take place. The entire farming family, old and young, were mixing compost, bone meal, plant ash, and Golden Fertilizer and evenly spreading it on the field.

Golden Fertilizer was the first product from Frederick's hometown that he replicated in this world, and it was actually zeolite.

Golden Fertilizer's claim of "no loss, no evaporation" was true. Zeolite, due to its special structure, could absorb nutrients from the soil like a sponge and release them when these substances were lacking in the surrounding soil, thereby reducing fertilizer nutrient loss.

These fields had just been planted with beans like peas. After harvesting the beans, the bean vines were plowed into the soil and watered sufficiently to decompose. Now, after applying basic fertilizer, they would be deep-plowed once more, and then the seeds could be sown.

Frederick watched for a while, then found the Plant Manipulator, Professor Matthias, and several of his students on the threshing ground next to the field.

Compared to the fertilization just now, what was happening here was epoch-making.

Small ditches had been dug in the compacted ground of the threshing ground, and a group of students were carrying buckets and pouring a dark red, muddy material into the ditches.

Frederick walked up to Matthias and asked curiously, "What kind of magic array is this?"

Matthias replied, "Magic to stimulate seeds. It can make plants produce more fruit."

Frederick's eyes lit up, and he quickly asked, "Does it work on all plants?"

"Naturally," Matthias said with a proud expression. "Many of the plants I manipulate use their fruit as weapons. I am most skilled in this magic."

Frederick's eyes gleamed, thinking he had found something valuable.

At this moment, a student said, "Teacher is terrible at the Entwining type, that's why he focuses on the fruit type."

Matthias glared, extended his right hand, holding a black plant seed of unknown origin between his fingers, and said coldly, "Want to try my terrible entangling magic?"

The student shrunk his neck and immediately ran away.

Matthias saw Frederick staring intently at the seed in his hand, smiled slightly, and loosened his grip, letting the seed fall to the ground.

A dark green light connected this seed and his finger. As soon as the seed touched the ground, it grew rapidly, transforming into a patch of vines in the blink of an eye.

These vines glowed green and twisted and grew like tentacles. Within a few breaths, they formed a pavilion beside the two of them, along with two chairs and a table made of curled vines.

Frederick was stunned by the scene before him, his mouth wide open. After the green light faded, he subconsciously reached out to poke the vines and looked up at the lush green leaves.

"Let's rest for a bit." Matthias sat down smugly. "We might reinforce the first batch of wheat seeds in the afternoon."

Frederick sat down and immediately asked, "Is this... real plant?"

"Yes," Matthias replied. "It's alive, but it won't live for long."

"Why?" Frederick asked in surprise.

"It's simple," Matthias said, shrugging. "Its roots absorbed and consumed all the moisture and nutrients in the surrounding soil. It won't be long before it starves and dies of thirst."

Frederick immediately jumped out of the pavilion and found that the circle of ground around it was indeed much drier than other areas.

He immediately called for the village chief to have people fetch water to irrigate the land.

The village chief and villagers were already scared silly. It took Frederick going over and kicking one person to get a reaction.

Matthias smiled and said to Frederick, who had returned to the pavilion, "If you prune, water, and fertilize it regularly, this pavilion can live for a very long time."

Frederick didn't respond, but pinched his chin and began to ponder.