POTATOES. 233 



the second year he will have to seek other customers or claim that he 

 has a new variety. Potatoes, like almost everything else, grow best 

 on good soil. The very best varieties may be "run down." A fine 

 grained, mealy potato will soon become a coarse grained, watery one, 

 if planted a few years on poor, unsuitable soil. Potatoes take potash 

 and phosphoric acid out of the ground, and also nitrogren and lime 

 in smaller quantities. They must have potash or they will starve, 

 and potash is not supplied by stable manure, or bones, or other ni- 

 trogenous fertilizers, such as are most commonly used by western 

 farmers. What your potatoes want is humus — decaying vegetable 

 matter, green manures, wood ashes, or potash salts. Feed your potato 

 field well, and the potato field will in turn feed you. It does not cost 

 one cent more to cultivate a rich soil full of the right kind of plant- 

 food than it does to cultivate a poor, barren, sterile field that has had 

 all the available plant-food taken out of it, and the results are so 

 much better. It is better to take 400 bushels of potatoes out of a 

 field than it is to raise 100 bushels. A man's back will not ache so 

 much digging the 400 bushels as it will digging 100, particularly if 

 the man owns the field. Fertilizers cost something. It takes time to 

 put them in the ground properly. Some farmers argue that Nebraska 

 soil is rich enough. Experience in the eastern states, in Illinois, 

 Indiana, and Ohio, where the land was once prairie, has proved that 

 a man cannot go on taking from the soil forever without putting any- 

 thing into it. A poor farm is just like a poor horse, or a lean cow ; 

 it cannot do as much, produce as much as the rich farm, or the well- 

 conditioned animal. No sensible man expects a half starved horse to 

 pull as hard as a strong, healthy, well-fed one, but when it comes to 

 the question of rich land or poor land, many a man says " It is too 

 expensive to fertilize; no, it costs too much. My farm is rich enough." 



The best soil for potatoes, or in fact for any root crop, is light, sandy 

 loam, well cultivated and well drained, and thoroughly filled with de- 

 cayed vegetable matter. In the older states where they can be ob- 

 tained forest leaves or swamp muck are much used. These being 

 unattainable here, the best preparation would be to turn under a field 

 of growing clover, vetches, rye, or any other green crop. 



As to methods of cnltivation some prefer hilling or ridging the po- 

 tatoes, while others prefer deep planting and level cultivation. Results 

 of experiments at the Michigan station indicate that the latter method 



