JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
270 
[ March 29, 1883. 
as well as feeding. Those which have been held on for two years of 
age will not only pay well for feeding under cover in consequence of 
their growing as well as fattening, but they attain the weights re¬ 
quired by the butchers, about 90 or 100 stones, at a period when 
cattle are not usually obtainable from the grazing districts of the 
midland or western counties. We have now strong hope that we 
may have a dry and favourable summer after a cycle of eight wet 
seasons, such a cycle as we have never known before during the past 
sixty years. Still farmers may have a care in feeding the grass 
lands with sheep, either in the irrigated meadows or low-lying strong 
land pastures, for even after a dry summer the autumn rains fre¬ 
quently fall heavy and render the pastures unsafe, for the sheep will 
take in the fluke, and should seldom be trusted on such pastures after 
midsummer. 
SOIL-EXHAUSTION—STRONG-GROWING POTATOES. 
These is one thing about disease-resisting Potatoes that must 
be apparent to all—they are all exceedingly strong growers, and 
are possessed of capital foraging powers, so much so that they 
are certain to utilise every particle of available plant-food that is 
within their reach. This foraging power has been hitherto looked 
on by the majority of farmers as an evil, for experience has 
proved that after a heavy crop of roots and tops ordinary soil with 
ordinary treatment will give inferior crops of corn. But is this 
necessarily the case ? Are such strong-growing Potatoes as 
Champion and Magnum Bonum exhausters of the soil, robbers and 
dissipators of plant-food ? Nine out of every ten farmers would 
answer—“Yes,” but undoubtedly the nine would be wrong, as we 
hope to be able to show. 
That strong-growing Potatoes yield the best crops, extirpate 
weeds, and by reason of their strong roots leave the soil finely 
pulverised, is recognised and placed to their credit. But we 
submit that these acknowledged good points do not embrace all 
the good points of strong-growing Potatoes. One other ought to 
be added—they are conservers of plant-food. Instead of robbing 
and dissipating, they organise, store up, and save what under 
ordinary conditions would be lost. That much more is removed 
from the land in a heavy crop than in a small one is evident and 
requires no proof. That ten tons of Champions or Magnums will 
take twice as much potash, phosphoric acid, and nitrogen from 
the soil as will five tons of Regents or Paterson’s Victorias will 
be admitted. In this sense Magnum Bonum will certainly rob 
the soil, and, by so much, leave it poorer. But poverty so caused 
is not grudged, for the crop affords the means for restoring the 
fertility. None care to husband the soil’s resources by lessening 
the crop. 
But there is the useless portion—the tops. If Magnum Bonums 
yield twice the weight of tubers that Regents or Victorias do, 
they give three times as much tops. Not only so, but these tops 
go on growing and taking from the soil weeks and even months 
after the earlier kinds have either ripened off or decayed because 
of disease. After this happens the land is in the condition of bare 
fallow. Indeed, we ought to qualify that statement by saying 
it is much more subject to loss, for while bare fallow is not 
manured, green fallow is, and as weakly-growing Potatoes are 
poor foragers they leave much manure unused. Now under such 
conditions there is much waste of the most valuable part of the 
manure. 
Let us glance at what happens on bare fallow. It gains 
nearly 7 fibs, of nitrogen from the rain that falls on it; but the 
same rain washes out fully 40 lbs., which is lost. On cropped 
land this loss is very much less, because the nitrates are utilised 
a9 fast as they are formed. In the case of crops early ripe or 
early removed there is always a heavy autumn and winter loss, 
because it is found that nitrates are most rapidly formed in 
autumn. Now, nitrogen as found in organised matter, or even as 
ammonia, is not subject to this loss—it is only when changed to 
nitrate that the loss occurs. This change is always proceeding, 
but more rapidly in warm than in cold soil. Hence the change is 
most rapid after midsummer. 
Now this loss is a serious matter. Nitrogen is worth, and costs 
in the market, £100 a ton. How are we to save it? The old 
way was to grow a late crop of some rapid-growing plant and to 
plough it in. This was called green manuring. It is a very good 
plan too ; and if farmers and gardeners would sow early-cleared 
land with this end in view they would certainly save money, 
for a penny saved is quite as good as a penny gained, and a pound 
of nitrogen so saved will do away with the necessity of buying 
that pound. 
The loss of nitrogen is least on pasture land, and next on land 
occupied with Mangolds and Turnips, simply because these go on 
using up the nitrates formed late. No exact experiments that we 
know of have been conducted to show what is the autumn and 
winter loss of nitrates after a crop of Magnum Bonum compared 
with that after one of Regents or other early sort. A good guide 
is afforded by the crop that follows. It is always, when nothing 
is done to balance the fertility, small—so small that we cannot be 
wrong in concluding that the strong-growing shaws are more con¬ 
servative of nitrogen than even Mangolds or Turnips. In other 
words, nothing will so save from loss valuable manure as will a 
crop of strong-growing Potatoes. But, of course, this will avail 
us nothing if we do not utilise this nitrogen. If the shaws are 
carted off the field and heaped up anywhere out of the way for 
ever, as is by far too common a practice, or burnt, as is certain 
almost to be the other course adopted, we, of course, get rid of 
this saved material, and decidedly in such a case the land is 
robbed and the plant-food dissipated. But this is a terrible, a 
ruinous mistake. What would we think of the man who, having 
a great crop of straw, burnt or tumbled it into a hole out of his 
way ? We should think him mad. But when it is done in the 
case of Potato haulm nobody seems to think it wrong. Properly 
treated big crops of shaws may be utilised as the most profitable 
of green manurings, the most effectual savers of slippery nitrates. 
The haulm of Champion and Magnum Bonum Potatoes cannot 
be ploughed in as can a thick sward of Rape or Clover. They 
can, however, be put up with ordinary manure fermented, rotted, 
and then applied to the land. We could name one northern farmer 
who thus uses his Potato haulm with much benefit to his purse. 
He used to dress his corn land in spring with superphosphate, 
potash salts, and sulphate of ammonia. This gave him first-class 
crops on very poor soil. First-class crops meant much straw, 
much straw meant many cattle, and many cattle meant much 
manure. This farmyard manure was liberally applied to the 
Potato and Turnip crops. But since he began to grow these 
strong-growing Potatoes he has partly reversed this order of 
manuring. A half manuring of ordinary manure is now given to 
Potatoes and Turnips, and in addition, the former are treated to a 
mixture of potash salts and phosphates, the Turnips to phosphates 
only. But the Potato tops are made up into large heaps as soon 
as the crop is lifted, with as much long manure as makes the heap 
heat moderately, and as much urine from the tanks as makes it 
moist. A month or two afterwards this is cut into thin slices 
with a hay knife, driven out and spread in frosty weather, and 
ploughed in as soon after as possible on his corn land. Oats 
follow Potatoes ; Barley, Turnips. By this means he finds that 
though he sells more off the farm in the form of Potatoes, corn, 
and cattle, he gives no more stableyard manure than formerly, 
buys a third less sulphate of ammonia, and yet he has better crops 
than before. And why ? Simply because he has learned to save 
what others waste ; and that, so far from strong-growing crops 
being wasters of plant-food, they are savers. 
We intended saying something in this paper on the special 
wants of special crops and the peculiarities of different soils ; 
but we fear the editorial scissors, and stop.—S. H. 
[We will make room for matter of the kind indicated.] 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Camden Square, London. 
Lat. 51° 33'40" N.; Long. 0° 8 0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
date. 
9 A.M. 
IN THE Day. 
1883. 
£> cq C5^h 
fleo O) 4) 
> 
Hygrome¬ 
ter. 
Direction 
of Wind. 
oti • 
. <33 -4-3 
p.— O 
= •£ P 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature. 
3 
ci 
P3 
March. 
43 S3 a 1 - 1 
1-4 4-» c3 
Dry. 
Wet. 
ojCCh 
fH 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
sun. 
On 
grass. 
Snn. 18 
Inches. 
29.622 
deg. 
36.8 
deg. 
33.2 
S.W. 
deg. 
37.0 
deg 
43.0 
deg. 
30.2 
deg 
65.4 
deg. 
26.3 
In. 
Mon. 19 
29.779 
36.8 
35.4 
N.E. 
37.1 
43.4 
33.6 
63.3 
31.1 
0.292 
Tues. £0 
29.670 
39.4 
38.2 
S. 
38.1 
41.2 
36.4 
46.7 
37.2 
— 
Wed. 21 
29.637 
38.8 
36.9 
E. 
38.3 
42.3 
36.8 
58 8 
36.4 
— 
Thurs. 22 
30.115 
31.4 
31.0 
N.E. 
38.1 
37.3 
29.5 
85.3 
£9.6 
— 
Friday 23 
Satur. 24 
30.208 
32.8 
30.6 
N.E. 
37.0 
41.1 
27.2 
87.3 
23.8 
— 
30.011 
30.7 
29.3 
N.W. 
36.8 
46.2 
22.4 
88.4 
19.3 
0.019 
29.860 
35.2 
33.5 
37.5 
42.1 
30.9 
70.7 
29.1 
0.311 
REMARKS. 
18th.—Fair and dry, but not very bright. 
19th.—Fine until noon, afterwards rain. 
20th.—Fair, but overcast. 
21st.—Dry, dull, and cold ; moonlight night. 
22nd.—Slight sun in early morning; bright cold day, with strong N.E. wind. 
23rd.—Fine, -with very bright sunshine and cold wind. 
24th.—Fine and bright, showers of sleet in evening. 
The temperature continues exceptionally low. The average for the past three 
weeks is lower than the average for the coldest part of January, and the 
minimum on Saturday (22'4°) is the coldest this year. The barometer was, how¬ 
ever, falling rapidly on Saturday evening.—G. J. SYMONS. 
