246 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



growth of tops going on, but the resources of the plant are taxed to keep up 

 this growth and there is no surplus to store in tubers. Hence, if you are 

 trying to grow potatoes in an old garden, do not put more stable manure on 

 the land, for that will only increase the trouble, but give it a heavy dressing 

 of a mixture of four parts of acid phosphate to one part of muriate of potash. 

 Use this at rate of 500 pounds per acre and you will find that your old garden 

 soil is not too rich to grow potatoes. It is simply suffering from an ill bal- 

 anced food ration, and there is nothing that will sooner renovate and restore an 

 old garden than a use of commercial fertilizers on it for a time. The old 

 garden which has been heavily manured with stable manure for generations, 

 has gotten into the bad habit of running everything to tops, and the only 

 way to get it out of this habit is to restore the balance in the soil food ele- 

 ments. The commercial fertilizers will have a far better effect on such soil 

 than they would on poor soil, because of the abundant supply of humus which 

 the garden has acquired during the past years. This humus retains moisture 

 and enables the soil to fully dissolve all the available food in the fertilizer, 

 and the plants get the benefit of the application far more certainly than they 

 would have gotten it in a poor soil incapable of retaining so much moisture. 

 The old garden is not too rich, it is simply unbalanced. 



VARIETIES OF POTATOES. 



It is rather beyond the scope of this book to give detailed lists of varie- 

 ties of the crops grown. There are so many fine sorts of Irish potatoes now 

 offered by dealers that a list would simply confuse instead of enlighten. It 

 is, however, curious to note that with the great increase of the introduction 

 of new varieties, the market gardeners and the farmers to a great extent ad- 

 here to the old favorites. In the South the Early Eose and Bliss's Triumph 

 almost equally divide the attention of the market growers of early potatoes, 

 the Bliss being the favorite in the Mississippi Valley and the Eose still tak- 

 ing the lead on the Atlantic coast. A variety (or sport) of the Bliss's Tri- 

 umph, known as White Skinned Triumph, has been produced, that some pre- 

 fer as a more salable potato to the red skinned sort. Our enterprising seeds- 

 men annually give us new potatoes, many of which are of surprising excel- 

 lence, but it takes a long time for a new potato to become standard with the 

 market growers. In Pennsylvania and for the far West the Burbank has be- 

 come the standard potato for the main crop, and seems to satisfy the condi- 

 tions where it has become so, until growers hardly think of any other. The 

 Experiment Stations in some States give us the results of trials of long lists 

 of varieties, while we are of the opinion that it would be far better to devote 

 more attention to the development and improvement of the old sorts. 



