334 Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



1st the mulched plot (No. 27) which received potato fertilizer and 

 kainit ; and, 2nd, the average yield of the plots not fertilized. It 

 will be remembered that the trenches were six feet apart. Very 

 likely they would have yielded just as well had they been three feet 

 apart, the distance usually allowed. At six feet apart the yield of 

 the mulched plot (No. 27) was at the rate of 172.33 bushels to the 

 acre, or 344.66, were we to estimate the yield from trenches three 

 feet apart. 



The average yield of the plots not fertilized, at six feet apart, 

 was at the rate of 69.66 bushels to the acre — or had the trenches 

 been three feet apart, double that amount, or 139.32 bushels to the 

 acre. If we take the average yield of all the plots which did not 

 receive ''complete^' fertilizers, we find it to be, at six feet apart, at 

 the rate of 79.75 bushels to the acre — or at three feet apart, 159.50 

 to the acre. The special fertilizer therefore increased the yield 

 only 10 bushels to the acre, if we reckon at six feet apart ; and 20 

 bushels, if at three feet apart, as compared with the natural soil ; 

 while the comjjlete fertilizer and hay mulch increased the yield, 

 over the natural soil, 102.69 bushels to the acre, if planted six feet 

 apart ; and 205.38 bushels to the acre, if planted three feet apart. 



With the complete fertilizer ( potash, nitrogen and phosphoric 

 acid) and without the hay mulch (Plot No. 17), the yield was 

 increased, over the natural soil or unfertilized i3lots, 58.67 bushels 

 to the acre at six feet and at three feet, 117.34 bushels to the acre. 

 With the complete fertilizer of plot No. 12 the yield was increased 

 38.50 bushels if planted six feet apart, and 77.00 bushels if three 

 feet apart. 



We have been particular to give this experiment at con- 

 siderable length and with a repetition of details and results, 

 because all the conditions were seemingly favorable, from the 

 beginning to the end, to render the tests as instructive as if they 

 had been conducted, under other conditions, for a series of years. 



THE POTATO-SEED PUZZLE. 



Professor J. W. Sanborn, of the Missouri Agricultural College, 

 at Columbia, rightly thinks it not beneath the dignity of experi- 

 ment stations to amass facts to guide even so seemingly simple an 

 operation of the farm as preparation of seed potatoes. The justice 

 of this view clearly appears from calculation that between the ex- 

 tremes in the practice of the several methods, there is involved at 

 least the use of ten bushels extra of seed per acre (worth, according 

 to prevailing prices, from 15 to $15) or in his own state 75,000,000 



