G. D. HOWE’S POTATO MANUAL. , 
7 
deficient in nitrogen, which is supplied by the nitrate of soda. The 
soil which gives good results with sulphate of potash alone has prob- 
ably been exhausted of its potash and must from some unusual cause 
have a supply of nitrogen and phosphoric acid. Likewise in the case' 
of the superphosphate, the soil either never had much phosphoric 
acid in it, or has been cropped with some plant that takes that element 
in a larger proportion than the two other fertilizing essentials. In 
the case of the barnyard manure and green crops, the soil, very 
likely, is of sandy or gravelly nature, devoid of much organic matter 
and on which the scab can not be induced to come, and may also be 
poverty stricken in all three essentials, and, of course, when they are 
supplied to this natural potato soil a good crop is the result. 
With the special potato manure or even any good commercial fer- 
tilizer made as a general crop manure, the results ought to be satis- 
factory on a poor soil and even if a little predisposed to grow scabby 
potatoes under other circumstances. 
To illustrate a little farther, to show how a man should use all the 
light he can get and then be his own guide, a man whose farm is on 
the fertile meadows, along the banks of the Conn, river, passed, last 
spring, a farmer who is farther back from the river and on higher 
ground and whose soil is gravelly, while the latter was planting 
potatoes. He was putting a small shovelful of barnyard manure in 
the hill and dropping the potato onto it and covering all at the same 
time ith soil. The passer-by says ‘-Why, is that the way you plant 
potatoes ? I shouldu t get a potato (it to market if I did that wav.” 
The potatoes turned out all right, with little or no scab. 
As handsome and smooth potatoes as the writer saw at any of the 
fairs the past Fall, were exhibited at one of our local fairs, and they 
were grown on hen manure, in a gravelly soil. Again— a certain 
local farmer says he hasn t had but one decent crop of potatoes 
during the some several years he has been farming, and that crop was 
grown on one of the special potato manures ; but it cost so much he 
thought he would see if he couldn’t find something else that would 
do, which was cheaper, but having tried something different each 
year, he says that the coming season he is going back to that special 
potato fertilizer again. 
Sir J. B. Lawes, of England, wrote, some four years ago, that his 
I WILL HAVE every recipient of this manual on mv books as 
A CUSTOMER, and if you can’t find anything described herein which 
3 on want, wiite me to that effect, stating your want and unless it is 
FOR THE MOON, or something as hard for me to get, I will get it 
for you, and at a saving to you, too. 
