POTATOES. 19 



with tliem, and kept well worked, they are a grand source of 

 fertility. 



Mr. C. W. Low, of Danielsonville. I have cultivated large 

 tracts of land in New Jersey, in Iowa, and some in this state, 

 and I should be very glad to pay something for a large quan- 

 tity of weed seed in the soil. I don't want to have the weeds 

 grow with the crop, but I should be willing to have them get 

 up three or four inches. I have always found that the most 

 profitable land to cultivate which had the most weed seed in 

 it, and had the most germinate and come up. 



Mr. H. L. Reade, of Jewett City. Dr. Baldwin brought in 

 several times, in the course of his admirable address, some- 

 thing about ashes. It is almost impossilile to get any amount 

 of ashes in this vicinity. How does he succeed in finding 

 them ? 



Dr. Baldwin. That is one of the benefits of coming up 

 here and learning. "We shall buy what ashes can be had, and 

 there is where we shall get the advantage of our neighbors 

 who do not attend the meetings. Mr. Reade can get all he 

 wants in Norwich. 



Mr. Reade. One word about the value of ashes upon corn. 

 Twenty-one years ago, my father carted from Greeneville up 

 to my farm in the neighborhood of Jewett City, perhaps two 

 hundred bushels of ashes. That field has been planted half a 

 dozen times since, and last summer we sowed it with corn for 

 the cattle, and on the ground where that pile of ashes lay, 

 covering perhaps two hundred square feet, some stalks grew 

 at least eight feet high, from which I gathered two sizeable 

 ears. Ten feet from there, the stalks were about four feet 

 high. That is what ashes do on the sandy loam on the Quin- 

 nebaug river. If we can buy them, as the doctor suggests, 

 for twenty-five, or even thirty-five cents a bushel, it is better 

 than to buy guano or phosphates at sixty dollars a ton. 



One word with reference to tying corn with birch. It 

 seems to me that rye straw, if you have it, is better than 

 birch. It would take a great deal of time to go into the woods 

 and cut the birches. 



The doctor's estimate of the Early Rose is difierent from 



