12 
EXPERIMENTS WITH POTATOES. 
The most profitable potato lands on old farms in this 
State are such as are so situated on side hills as to be suf¬ 
ficiently moist to mature a crop without irrigation. Such 
soils are loose and open, never bake, and maximum crops 
are raised with the minimum of labor and expense. 
APPLICATION OF FERTILIZERS. 
A knowledge of the special needs of our soils is an 
important factor in all profitable land culture, and this 
knowledge is only acquired by carefully conducted and 
oft-repeated experiments that shall determine the efficacy 
and profitableness of commercial fertilizers on Colorado 
soils. 
Very early in the history of the culture of garden 
crops on our upland soils the necessity for the application 
of fertilizers was readily made apparent to the market 
gardener, so that to-day feeding the soil for garden crops 
is as necessary, desirable and profitable as anywhere else. 
This necessity of the market gardener is as apparent 
and is as forcibly expressed on the older farms of this 
State by the crop returns, in comparison with earlier pio¬ 
neer farming, as in the older States of the Union. 
The fertilizers employed in this trial were manufac¬ 
tured and sold in this State. The soil, a clay loam, rather 
poor, had never been in crop before. 
Whole seed pieces, of medium size, were planted in 
trenches dug eight inches deep; the fertilizers were 
mixed with 4 inches of soil and the sets placed on top. 
The following table shows the fertilizers used, num¬ 
ber of hills planted and the yield per acre : 
Table No. 5—Application of Fertilizers. 
Kind and Quantities 
of Fertilizers Used. 
Name of 
Variety 
Grown. 
Yield of 
45 Hills 
—lbs 
Estimated 
Yield per 
Acre— 
Bushels. 
150 lbs Merle’s Bone Superphosphate 
Morton White 
62 
333 1-2 
200 “ 
plaster.;. 
68 
365 1-2 
200 “ 
Mo. clay kalsomine. 
Ruby 
60 
322 2-3 
250 “ 
bone meal 
117 
629 1-5 
The plat treated with bone meal exhibited a very de¬ 
cided advantage the whole season, and ripened its vines 
first. 
