HORTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT. 



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The yields on all of the plots are less this year than last year. This is 

 due more to the season than to the exhaustion due to the raising the same 

 crop on the same ground two years in succession, although some of the 

 plots show that certain elements are partially exhausted. 



Fertilizers under the seed produced the best results in 1891, and in 1892 

 fertilizers over the seed did the best. The different conditions of the two 

 years explain the difference. This past season was very wet, and the plant 

 food was carried down to the roots, and as the plots had the same fertil- 

 izers applied the previous year, the food elements remaining unused in the 

 soil were not all above or all below the seed, but thoroughly mixed with 

 the whole body of the soil. So the plots with the fertilizers applied above 

 or below the seed do not represent this one condition exactly, but from the 

 position of the feeding roots of this potato, we advise using the fertilizer 

 under the seed. 



The yields of the diflPerent plots compared with each other is about the 

 same this past season as in 1891 ; so for convenience of further study the 

 yields of the two years are united in the following table. 



Table No. 11. — Yields of fertilizer plots, bushels per acre — Average for two years. 



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