POTATO CULTURE. 151 



lie there long. You must get something else to growing at 

 once to eat up the stored fertility * or it will get away from 

 you. Nature does not wait long. In another chapter I 

 wrote of sowing wheat thickly on half an acre of stubble 

 land last fall, that would otherwise lie bare all winter. Well, 

 we have plowed it lately, the wheat being about a foot high 

 and as thick as it could well grow. The sod was very heavy 

 and tough. If we had left that land b'are from October till 

 May, the fertility that fed that wheat would largely have 

 leached down beyond the reach of my potatoes this year. 

 The clover that would be sown there in a year or two would 

 pump it up again, more or less of it; but as it is, I get it 

 now. Further, clover has done its best in the way of draw- 

 ing from air and subsoil at the end of two seasons' growth 

 (one with the grain it was sown with). To make the most 

 of it as a renovating crop, one needs to turn it under then, or 

 in the spring following, and turn the accumulated fertility 

 into money by putting in some suitable crop. Here is where 

 many fail. They let the clover grow along and run out, and 

 much of the work done by the clover is lost. 



I might speak of the benefit that comes from shading the 

 ground by having it densely covered with clover, practically 

 all the time for two seasons. I can not give it to you in dol- 

 lars and cents, but it is working in accordance with nature's 

 law, that covered shaded land grows richer, and large profit 

 will come from it. 



This is a great subject, to which a whole book of this size 

 could well be devoted, and [ can, in a single chapter, only 

 touch the matter here and there in a way, perhaps, to set 

 you to investigating. Let me briefly put figures to some of 

 my first statements. 



My land will grow about 2| tons of timothy hay per acre, 

 in. one cutting, and usually there is not much aftermath. 

 In clear clover (the common variety) it will grow not less 

 than H tons (dry) per acre after the wheat is removed in the 

 summer. We have often had two tons. This we clip oft' 



