6 
The Colorado Experiment Station. 
The varieties grown are the Monroe County Prize, Rural N. Y. 
No. 2 , Pearl and Champion. The yield is at present about 400 
cars. Most of these potatoes are marketed in New Mexico or 
Texas. 
The tendency toward running out is not so noticeable here or 
at Carbondale as in the Greeley District. In fact the same seed 
has been kept at both these places for at least fifteen years without 
deteriorating. 
The Divide District. The Arkansas Divide is the only 
place in the State of any extent where potatoes are grown without 
irrigation. Conditions cannot so well be controlled and the yield 
is correspondingly less. A specialty is made of growing pota¬ 
toes for seed in this locality. As much of this seed is used in the 
Greeley District the same varieties are grown. 
The culture given the crop is similar to the other places ex¬ 
cept that more surface cultivation is necessary to conserve the limi¬ 
ted amount of water though the rainfall is considerably in excess 
of other parts of the State. 
METHODS OF POTATO CULTURE IN THE GREELEY DISTRICT 
Owing to the character of western soils, system of irrigation, 
large acreage of potatoes per farm and rotation of crops, the me¬ 
thods of potato culture in Colorado differ somewhat from those of 
other sections of the country. At first the methods of irrigation 
and cultivation best suited to the conditions here were not well 
understood but since it was found that alfalfa could be success¬ 
fully broken up and that deep cultivation was most beneficial the 
methods have not changed to any considerable extent. 
There is a prevailing opinion that potatoes require a certain 
kind of soil. There undoubtedly is a relation between the yield 
and quality of potatoes at certain places and the different soils. 
Just what this relation is, however, has not as yet been success¬ 
fully explained. Good yields of potatoes are produced on several 
different soils and failures occur on all of them. 
Soils. The soils used for potatoes 111 the Greeley Potato Dis¬ 
trict are: *Billings loam, Colorado fine sand, Colorado sand, Bill¬ 
ings clay loam and to a certain extent Laurel sand loam. 
The Billings loam is a heavy soil well mixed with sharp gran¬ 
itic gravel. It has a depth of from two to five or six feet. This 
soil is underlaid with gravel which gives good under drainage. 
More care has to be exercised in handling this soil because if 
worked when too wet or too dry, it is more liable to become lumpy 
than are the lighter loams. 
The Colorado fine sand loam is intermediate between the 
Billings loam and the Colorado sand. It is generally deeper than 
* U. S. D^partm^nt of Agriculture, Bureau of Soils, 1904. 
