POTATO CULTUKE. 169 



CHAPTER XXI. 



Experience in 1893. 



PLOWING. 



You have read what I said in the spring about plowing so 

 as to keep land level, and avoid all dead furrows ; about 

 plowing a field 16 rods wide all in one land, even if I did 

 waste (?) some time going " empty ? ' across the ends.* To 

 show you that I know what I am talking about, I give the 

 result. The potatoes in that field bring us just about $7.00 

 per row. Had we plowed in three lands, and had two dead- 

 furrows, we should have been short two rows of potatoes, 

 or $14, which would more than pay for plowing the entire 

 field. The little time that, hastily speaking, you might say 

 was wasted when drawing the plow across the ends, was 

 really so invested as to bring a tremendous profit, and then 

 the field looked so nice one even, unbroken crop! By the 

 way, we took up the old original rail fence between this field 

 and that of our next neighbor, last fall, and built, in place 

 of it, a neat, strong, oak board fence, thus getting ground 

 for one more row of pototoes. This looked very much nicer ; 

 and then that row of potatoes ($7.00) would more than pay 10 

 per cent interest on the entire cost of the fence for one year. 



SOIL. 



We have had an excessively dry season. On our land that 

 is naturally well fitted for potato- growing we had more than 

 twice as many potatoes per acre as on clay soil, which is not 

 suitable for the crop. With just rain enough, coming gently 

 and never too hard, and coming often, our clay spots would 

 do pretty well. Again, our season started with a great 

 storm, lasting nearly three days, soon after we had planted 

 our potatoes. This caused much of the seed to rot on the 



* See publisher's appendix in the latter part of this book. 



