Preparing for Potatoes. 163 



When it does, I am ready to buy it, if it pays. There is much 

 good potato land that does not differ materially from mine, doubt- 

 less, and you will do well to read and ponder well how clover 

 serves me as a fertilizer, and, perhaps, learn in that the secret of 

 fertilizers not showing any results. I wish it were possible to 

 know how much clover and tillage, and how much the fertilizer 

 has to do with the yield, on some potato farms where fertilizers are 

 largely used. Suppose I used a ton of fertilizers per acre on my 

 farm, all over the potato field, every three years, fully believing 

 that fertilizers were as truly and surely plant food as manure is, 

 beyond all question. How easy for me to write, and believe, but 

 not know, that my crops were largely due to the fertilizers ! 



But now we have the soil selected and fertilized properly, how 

 and when shall we plow it? As a rule, I would not plow until 

 quite dry in the spring. Reasons for this have been given in 

 another chapter. There may be exceptions to this rule. Wire- 

 worms or grubs in the soil may be destroyed by fall plowing. 

 Some clay soils may work better after freezing, but such are not 

 potato soils. Particularly would I avoid plowing potato land 

 until quite dry, and working it also after plowing. Loose, mellow 

 land is wanted for best results. Always work with this in view, 

 although you cannot always do as you would. I plow a very 

 little deeper every time I break up a clover sod for potatoes. 

 Probably the average is not more than half an inch. When my 

 field was plowed this spring and came to dry, you could see the 

 subsoil nearly all over, a little skim of it. My soil is now about 

 as deep again as when I came here. I can remember places where 

 the plow used to skim along not over four inches deep on the sub- 

 soil that one could hardly force plow into without riding the 

 beam. Those places are plowed same as rest of field now. The 

 deepening has been gradual. We have some land now that will 

 stand plowing nine to ten inches deep. I mean to keep on until 

 all is like that. To thus deepen the soil one needs sharp points, 

 and to plow before subsoil gets too dry. I do not suppose it will 

 be practicable to plow deeper than ten inches, on account of power 

 required, and perhaps not advisable if one could. I do not know 

 about this, however. I have seen land plowed two or three inches 

 deeper than usual at one time with injurious results, to the first 

 few crops at least. I heard last winter of a man who put in 100 

 acres of potatoes the year before, and sold them for $11,000. 

 Last year he got excited, bought a traction engine to draw his 

 gang plows, and plowed, so the neighbors told me, more than ten 

 inches deep on land that never had been plowed deep before. 

 He put in 150 acres, paying some $3,000 for seed, as I was told, 

 and in the fall he made an assignment. The reason which he 

 himself gave for failure was his deep plowing. Now you cer- 

 tainly will not read what I have said so carelessly as to plow 

 your land much deeper than usual at one time. 



