io The Colorado Experiment Station. 
It has been found in several experimnets that where the ground 
and plants are in good condition when the tubers have set, that a 
fair yield of tubers may be obtained, even though the top soil be 
dry so that little more plant food could be taken from the soil. This 
is an important point, in our irrigated districts, as we believe that 
entirely too much water is ordinarily given after the tuber-forming 
season of growth. We believe that where the soil is in fairly moist 
condition at the bottom of the hills when the tubers are one-third 
grown, that the yield will be practically as great if no more water 
is given, as if another thorough irrigation is applied. Those plants 
that die back to the ground each winter as the asparagus, rhubarb 
and lily take care of the plant food by storing it in the underground 
parts. This is also true of the potato except that the food is stored 
in a different part of the plant. If the potato stem or leaf be ex¬ 
amined during the latter part of the season, considerable quantities 
of starch will be found in the tissue. After the tuber begins to 
form, this starch is rapidly transferred to the tubers. In a field 
at Greeley in 1908 four plots were staked out by us, each of which 
contained 1/100 of an acre and were as nearly uniform as possible. 
The first of these plots was dug August 25. At this time a few 
of the tubers had reached the size of six or seven ounces. The 
plants were in good condition of growth and the soil moderately 
moist. The tubers dug weighed seventy pounds, or seven thousand 
pounds per acre. Nine days later the second plot was dug. In the 
meantime the tubers had very materially increased in size so that 
many of them weighed more than one pound. The total weight 
of the plot was one hundred fifty pounds or 15,000 pounds per 
acre. One week later the next plot was dug, which gave 170 pounds, 
or 17,000 pounds per acre. If the first plot had been dug two or 
three days earlier and the second plot two or three days later it 
would have been found that by far the larger part of the total tuber 
growth was made in two weeks. 
POTATOES MIXED IN THE HILL. 
The Botanist and the Farmer .—The botanist knows that pota¬ 
toes cross or mix in the seed, and not in the tuber. The grower 
knows, as an actual fact, that he finds different colors and kinds of 
potatoes in the same hill from the same seed piece, and he often 
vows that the botanist is a theorist. 
Both Are Right .—There is no occasion for bad blood on the 
subject. There is the highest authority that both are right. Just 
as Albinos are born in human families, or as peaches and apples 
sometimes have limbs whose fruit varies from that of the rest of 
the tree, so white potatoes come in purple hills, or purple in white 
hills, or round ones among long tubers, by natural variation, or 
coming up of diverse inheritance. 
