“I do not see,” said the Doctor, “that you have answered my question, but I suppose that, with potatoes at fifty cents a bushel, and wheat at $1.50 per bushel, artificial manures can be more profitably used on potatoes than on wheat, and the same is probably true of oats, barley, corn, etc.”
I have long been of the opinion that artificial manures can be applied to potatoes with more profit than to any other ordinary farm-crop, for the simple reason that, in this country, potatoes, on the average, command relatively high prices.
For instance, if average land, without manure, will produce fifteen bushels of wheat per acre and 100 bushels of potatoes, and a given quantity of manure costing, say $25, will double the crop, we have, in the one case, an increase 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.”