POTATOES. 217 
The mostimportant lesson to belearned by anew-comer, 
in potato culture, is to avoid planting potatoes on heavy 
soil or low lying fields. The northerly latitude, with less 
heat to evaporate the moisture and warm the soil, combined 
with the probability of heavy rainfall at some period during 
season, renders the risk of injury from drowning out so great 
as to be prohibitive. Should there be no other land avail- 
ble, it will pay to ridge the land, and plant on the ridges, to 
allow the water to drain away. But when as is usual only 
a few acres are devoted to potatoes, the field selected should 
always be a well drained, sloping or elevated piece. The ex- 
perience of the seven vears planting on the farm illustrates 
this fact. The crop of ’96 on light, drained soil, gave 203.5 
bushels per acre for an average of two fields. In ’97, a por- 
tion of the field was in a swale and the yield was cut down 
to 137.3 bushels per acre. In 1898 the crop was planted on 
a piece of new ground, broken the previous year, full of hu- 
mus and of a loamy texture, underlaid with clay at 1 ft. to 
2ft. This was the best possible potato soil, with the excep- 
tion, that it was not well drained, and water was apt to 
soak into it from higher ground. In order not to convey a 
false impression, it must be clearly stated that this piece was 
not swampy, had born heavy hardwood timber, consisting 
of oak, basswood and poplar and has since borne magnifi- 
cent crops of grain and clover. The potatoes were injured 
on about one-half the piece,so that the yield on8 acres aver- 
aged 132 bushels per acre while on the higher portions it 
gave just twice this, or 265 bushels per acre. The following 
season this whole field of 11.7 acres was again planted to 
potatoes, about May 24th. Heavy rains setin and nota 
sprout came up. Three weeks later, about 4 acres of the 
highest land was again planted to potatoes, which came up, 
but the rains continuing, the vines were drowned out and 
did not produce a crop. 
As this season was wetter than usual, and in order to 
thoroughly test this question, 4.7 acres of this field were 
again planted to potatoes in 1900. This was the dry spring. 
The vines did splendidly until the later heavy rains set in, 
but the injurious effect of too much water at this late period 
(August) reduced the yield to 64 bushels per acre. The var- 
