50 [Senate 



application of these minerals in manure to the hills of potatoes, supply 

 100 pounds of the precise minerals which potatoes need, to form 10,000 

 pounds of their tubers ? No. And here is the difficulty that meets the 

 practical farmer, who despises a knowledge of the things that make 

 potatoes. 10,000 pounds of tubers use, in growing, only 100 pounds of 

 earthy minerals ; hut they are not the same in kind and proportion that 

 exist in timothy hay. In 100 pounds of the ash obtained from timothy 

 there is but 15 pounds of potash ; while in an equal weight of potato 

 ash there is5li pounds of this alkali. Hence, to give growing potatoes 

 51^ pounds of potash, by the application of cow dung made from timo- 

 thy hay or grass, enough must be used, which if burnt would yield 

 340 pounds of ashes — being a loss of 240 pounds, or more than two- 

 thirds of the mineral elements in the dung, to say nothing of the needless 

 waste of carbon and nitrogen, or of the organic elements of timothy and 

 potatoes. 



Without going into all the details of the component elements in 

 timothy, clover and red-top hay, and in oat straw, and corn fodder, 

 which materially affect the composition of stable and barn yard 

 manure, enough has been said to show that, by placing in each hill of 

 potatoes a little unleached ashes., ordinary manure will produce three 

 • times more potatoes by the addition of this little available potash, than 

 it would without the alkali. On most soils, the addition of lime, 

 plaster and common salt, as well as ashes, will give a double power to 

 any manure formed of hay or straw, when used for growing potatoes. 

 As the amount of these earthy fertilizers in potatoes, whether in their 

 stems, leaves or roots, is not large, a small dose applied in each hill 

 will answer the purpose. The vital importance of potash and soda, 

 in forming vegetable tissues, woody fibre, albumen, starch, sugar, oil 

 and gum, is quite too much overlooked, by those that toil hard and 

 long to transform earth, air and water, into these organized sub- 

 stances. It is for a wise and indispensable purpose that Nature uses 

 these alkalies in plants. Their extreme solubility renders them very 

 .prone to loss, and to become deficient in cultivated fields. 



I met with a farmer in Genesee county who had raised forty bushels 

 of oats on an acre, which he had just sold at a distant village to pay for 

 a plow and cultivator. The straw he had retained to feed to his young 

 stock during the coming winter. He had a field that was badly 

 worn, which he thought would grow, without manure, 20 bushels of 

 oats per acre. He desired to know whether all the oat straw that pro- 



