Farm Notes. 
29 
III. POTATOES. 
A—ALFALFA SOD COMPARED WITH OLD LAND. 
A test was made of potatoes on alfalfa sod as compared 
with good land that had been manured two years before 
and raised one crop of grain and one of corn. There were 
nine plots of each and though the plots are quite variable, 
in each case the alfalfa sod gives a larger yield than the 
old ground. In the plots which are the nearest alike, the yield 
from alfalfa sod is not quite twice that from the old 
ground, while in two other plots it is five times as much. 
The average is about three to one, being 3601 pounds of 
merchantable potatoes from the alfalfa sod and but 1277 
pounds from the old ground. 
B—EXPERIMENTS WITH FERTILIZERS, 
Experiments in fertilizing the ground for potatoes were 
made with a complete fertilizer and with kainit, sulphate of 
potash and muriate of potash. The complete fertilizer was 
bought in Denver at forty dollars per ton; the potash salts 
came from the Potash Trust of New York City. The 
fertilizer was applied at the rate of four hundred pounds per 
acre. 
Plot 
1 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 
10 
11 
Fertilizer. 
Nothing 
Sulphate of potash 
Muriate of potash 
Complete fertilizer 
Kainit 
Nothing 
Sulphate of potash 
Muriate of potash 
Complete fertilizer 
Kainit 
Nothing 
Yield of potatoes. 
431 
430 
488 
576 
665 
689 
628 
610 
409 
383 
273 
Combining the plots gives the following averages : 
