POTATO CULTUKE. 171 



Then a neighbor who planted when the soil was rather damp 

 and heavy, using the planter on soil as fertile as ours, failed 

 to get as good returns by half largely, as he thinks, on ac- 

 count of the packing of the ground by the wedge-shaped 

 marker, or plow, of the planter. We could find this fall, 

 when he dug, the packed furrow-mark made by the planter. 

 Another neighbor, on lighter soil, and crop put in when quite 

 dry, had no such trouble with his planter ; but there were 

 the missing hills. I hired an extra man by the day, to help 

 drop, at $1.25, and his dinner and supper. lie wanted the 

 job, and dropped about one and a half acres per day of ten 

 hours, and did it nicely. 



SMALL SEED. 



I think I have told you that we were unable to get large 

 Freeman potatoes enough to plant last spring, and so, from 

 necessity, planted a good many small ones. We cut off the 

 seed end and threw it away, and then split the tubers into 

 two or three pieces, owing to the size. As there are few 

 eyes on the small Freemans, these were about one-eye pieces. 

 Although I would not follow up this practice, we got good 

 results this time. We all thought the potatoes averaged 

 larger than those from large seed that came from friend J. 

 M. Smith, of Wisconsin. This set me to thinking. I knew 

 that small seed would not grow larger potatoes than large, 

 unless there was some other reason. This it was, undoubt- 

 edly : The small seed we had kept in our pits during the win- 

 ter, and it was in absolutetly perfect .condition not an eye 

 having started when it was t >ken out while Mr. S.'s seed 

 was slightly sprouted when it got here. Had we kept his 

 seed in our pits over winter, we should have been the gainers. 



CHANGE OF SEED. 



Our choice seed from Mr. Smith gave no better results 

 than large seed of our own growing, side by side. But now 

 this may be all owing to the fact mentioned above, that our 

 seed was in more perfectly sound condition. Do not think 



