Norwich bulletin., 1915-11-06

answer, that particular season, is go- ing to be yes or no.
 For years ] sprayed regularly with Bordeaux The results were seldom appreciable to the naked eye and in bushel basket. Perhaps they might have been to microscope or by the use of diamond-dealer scales. don't know for, in common with other farmers, I find my customers do not care for so fine measurements. When they buy bushel of potatoes they want a full bushel. and if the basket is "gcod measure. pressed down. and, shaken together. and running over they are especially pleased to get it.. A gain to any crop which Is not vis- ible to the alert eye of an experienced farmer and can't be measured by or dinary, coarse, commercial bushel baskets isn't one of much interest to him.
 AS I say, I sprayed consistently for years, because 1t was said by the agri- cultural '.know-it- alls', to be the cor rect thing to do.
 Some of those years my potatoes did well, and some they did not. Some years they were sound and fine; some years they rotted so you could smell the field ten acres off.
 But.-and here was the point to me, the years when they didn't rot were years nobody else's rotted while sea-
 
 sof rot throughout the neighborhood gave me about as much of it as my neighbcrs.
 l began to wonder whether my oc. casiopai good crops were due to my spraying or to outside seasonal con-. ditfons; and whether my crops of rot were due to spraying or to similarly uncomfortable seasonal conditions.
 So I devoted one year and one po- k,H 4,e-% hy<, need to bore you with the conditions. It's enough to say that the test was made with an open mind, not to bolster up any preconceiyed argument, but to find out the truth about my potatoes and my dirt on my farm under my conditions of climate etc., etc.
 I vented to know,-not to back up any theory Time enough to make a theory after had facts to base one on.
 Results were: On just one sprayed plat,-there were a dozen all sprayed with different formulae or under diff ferent conditions-on just sprayed plat the vines remained green ten days longer than on the others or on the unsprayed check plats between. Careful measurements into bushel Eboxes at digging time showed, gain in total yield on this plat of about three bushels per acre But,-the product of salable potatoes was near ly three bushels less. The gain was wholly in the. larger number of small tubers and the marked increase of mares nests in that plat. As the highest price can get about here for small potatoes. "pig' potatoes, average about ten cents a bushel, the plat didn't prove peculiarly profitable.
 For the rest of the field. while there were variations. manifestly due to in- equalities of soil, moisture, etc, there were DO commercially apparent vari- ations due to spraying Eliminating : the factors mentioned of soil, mois- ture. etc. the plats yielded about the same and routed about the same. Since then, I've kept the bugs off with Paris green or arsenate of lead, and tried to control the rot, so far as I might, by soil treatment The use of plenty of fine-ground limestone, mixed perhaps with acid phosphate and put on after spring blowing to be thoroughly hayTowed in has, thus far, seemed to me to do more goodson my particular dirt than any amount of Len wi,