90 



EXPERIMENTS ON EARLY POTATOES, 



[Appendix^ 



Mr. Outhwaite of Banesse, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, a skilful and 

 enterprising practical farmer, who has for some years been using rape-dust over 

 a great breadth of his wheat crop, has favoured me with the result of one of his 

 more accurate trials on spring wheat, made during the past season. The wheat 

 was sown after turnips taken off in April, and part of the field was dressed with 

 rape-dust at the rate of 5| cwt, (or at £l a ton, of 40s.) per acre. The produce 

 of the dusted portion was 39 bushels, and of the undusted 29 bushels per acre, 

 and the increase of straw was one-fifth of the whole. Both samples were of 

 equal weight, and sold at the same price, — 8s. 3d. per bushel. In this experi- 

 ment the increased 10 bushels cost 40s., or 4s. per bushel, giving, on a large 

 breadth of land, a handsome remuneration. 



These results will, I trust, encourage others to make trials similar to tliose of 

 Mr, Fleming and Mr. Outhwaite; while these gentlemen will, doubtless, be in- 

 duced each to try that applicaUon which has succeeded so well in the other's 

 hands. It might be useful as well as interesting to compare the produce of four 

 plots arranged and dressed as follows : — 



4. — Experiments on Early Potatoes, 1841, 

 All were dunged in the usual manner with farm-yard manure, at the rate of 

 about 30 cubic yards per acre. The potatoes were all planted on the 25th of 

 March, on the same heahy black soil. The several dressings were applied on 

 the 20th of May, and the potatoes were all lifted on the 28th of September. 



This break of ground consists of a piece'of poor clay mixed with moss, about 

 9 inches deep ; subsoil a very stiff blue till. The dung was old from the farm-yard, 

 about the ordinary quantity (30 cubic yards per acre) spread upon the land, and 

 dug in. The potatoes were drilled in with the hoe; as the ground was wet the 

 plants came up but weak. The nitrate of soda was sown before the other top- 

 dressings, and had remarkably quick effect, as it showed the third night after 

 being sown. The sulphate of soda does not occasion the dark green colour 

 which is seen upon the potatoes after the dressing of the nitrate, but there is not 

 the smallest doubt of its beneficial effects, although not in so great a degree as 

 the nitrate. The mixture, which is composed of gds of sulphate of soda and ^d 

 of nitrate, has a wonderful effect in strenothening the growth (which it keeps 

 longer than with nitrate alone), and the mixture has the same effect in producing 

 the dark green colour as the nitrate alone. 



Remarks. — That a mixture of substances is likely to be more efficacious as a 

 dressing, than the application of one substance alone, except in peculiar circum- 

 stances, is consistent not only with long practical experience — for how many 

 substances are mixed together in farm-yard manure 1 — but also with the theore- 

 tical principles laid down in the text. [See Lectures IX. and X.] These experi- 

 ments upon potatoes show that this crop upon Mr. Fleming's land was benefitted 

 by both nitrate and sulphate of soda, but in a vastly greater degree by a mixture 

 of the two. And I might consider my suggestion in regard to the employment 

 of sulphate of soda as a manure, to have been of no mean use in practical agri- 

 culture, had it led to nothing else than to this happy mixture of Mr, Fleming. 



I have received also from Mr. Fleming's gardener (Mr. Alexander Gardiner) 



