ncrease_ of:--

15 bushels of wheat at $1.50 $22.50
15 cwt. of straw 3.50
------
$26.00
Cost of manure 25.00
------
Profit from using manure $1.00

And in the other:--

100 bushels of potatoes at 50 cents $50.00
Cost of manure 25.00
------
Profit from using manure $25.00

The only question is, whether the same quantity of the right kind of
manure is as likely to double the potato crop as to double the wheat
crop, when both are raised on average land.

"It is not an easy matter," said the Deacon, "to double the yield of
potatoes."

"Neither is it," said I, "to double the yield of wheat, but both can be
done, provided you start low enough. If your land is clean, and well
worked, and dry, and only produces ten bushels of wheat per acre, there
is no difficulty in making it produce twenty bushels; and so of
potatoes. If the land be dry and well cultivated, and, barring the bugs,
produces without manure 75 bushels per acre, there ought to be no
difficulty in making it produce 150 bushels.

"But if your land produces, without manure, 150 bushels, it is not
always easy to make it produce 300 bushels. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, our land is, in most cases, poor enough to start with,
and we ought to be able to use manure on potatoes to great advantage."

"But will not the manure," asked the Deacon, "injure the quality of the
potatoes?"

I think not. So far as my experiments and experience go, the judicious
use of good manure, on dry land, favors the perfect maturity of the
tubers and the formation of starch. I never manured potatoes so highly
as I did last year (1877), and never had potatoes of such high quality.
They cook white, dry, and mealy. We made furrows two and a half feet
apart, and spread rich, well-rotted manure in the furrows, and planted
the potatoes on top of the manure, and covered them with a plow. In our
climate, I am inclined to think, it would be better to apply the manure
to the land for potatoes the autumn previous. If sod land, spread the
manure on the surface, and let it lie exposed all winter. If stubble
land, plow it in the fall, and then spread the manure in the fall or
winter, and plow it under in the spring.