Although the haze of plague always hovers over people's heads, the joy of the potato harvest still makes people feel joyful and happy.

“…… With your help, the problem of potato detoxification has finally been solved. Otherwise, you really have to worry about the reduction of production in the future! ”

Pointing to the lush potato field in front of him, Merlin smiled and said, "...... In the first year, we were able to harvest 12 tonnes of potatoes per hectare, but in the second year we had only 8 tonnes per hectare, and in the third year it had dropped to 5 and a half tonnes."

“…… Oh, my God! Yields are so low? I remember that in our side, the yield of potatoes per hectare of land must reach at least 30 tons, which can be regarded as a barely passable harvest! Is the land of England so much more barren than our homeland? ”

Senior Sister Ma Tong, who had rarely come over before, blinked her eyes and said a little incredulously, "...... How the hell did you farm before? ”

“…… What's the solution? At that time we had neither pesticides nor fertilisers, and the temperature in Britain was low today, the light conditions were also poor, and the soil was already poor...... "Merlin sighed...... What's worse is that the problem of potato detoxification has never been solved! ”

-- Potatoes, including sweet potatoes and other tuber crops, although they have the advantages of wide adaptability, drought tolerance and barrenness, and few pests and diseases, due to the long-term use of asexual propagation, they are very susceptible to virus infection in the cultivation process, which is commonly referred to as potato degradation.

These viruses then accumulate in the tubers or seedlings, gradually destroying the normal physiological functions of the potato plant. As a result, some potato plants gradually become declining, the plant shape becomes shorter, the leaf surface shrinks, the leaves appear yellow and green intercalated spots, and even the leaf veins are necrosis. until the entire compound leaf falls off, etc. Next, due to the interference and destruction of the organs that produce nutrients by the virus, the potato plant will naturally grow abnormally, and the potato will become smaller, deformed, and the quality will be seriously deteriorated, and eventually the yield will be greatly reduced.

There are more than 20 kinds of viruses and viruses that infect potatoes, and these viruses can infect potato plants alone. It can also be co-infected with other viruses, that is, more than two viruses invade on the same plant. Therefore, the longer the potato is grown, the more severe the virus becomes. The greater the reduction in production.

It is common in agricultural production that the seed potatoes transferred from other places produce high yields in the first year or the first season, while the harvested potatoes are kept for replanting. The growth of the plants deteriorated significantly. Yields have fallen by at least half, which is commonly referred to as potato degradation.

Generally speaking, as long as potatoes are grown for more than six generations without detoxification, the yield will drop to an almost unsightly level. The Carmelo Research Station had been planting potatoes for three years before the space-time wormhole was opened. Although potatoes accumulate toxins much more slowly in the cold island of Great Britain than in the tropics, the declining annual yields per unit are still worrying.

Even now. The problem of potato detoxification is due to the lack of necessary equipment and operators. At the Camelot research station, there was still no solution, and the simplest method was to use the simplest method - to send a large number of seed potatoes directly from the other end of the wormhole to sow seeds.

Relying on these future Shijie's "agricultural crossing artifacts", the Castle of Carmellot easily solved the problem of feeding 20,000 immigrants in the past two years. Although only a quarter of the population is engaged in agricultural production, the potatoes produced are not only sufficient for self-sufficiency, but even have a surplus to sell.

On the other hand, in King Arthur's kingdom, barley and wheat still used medieval European seeds, and although the use of compost and deep ploughing made the grain yield increase compared to the original, and the harvest reached ten times the amount sown, it was still very sad compared to modern farms.

“…… What are you guys like? Is it a dog's tail grass? Any seed company on our side can buy high-yielding wheat seeds, so why not promote them here? In this way, you don't have to gnaw on potatoes until your face turns green? ”

Looking at the sparse, shriveled and sallow, obviously poor wheat in the field, Senior Sister Ma Tong asked the others again in confusion.

“…… It's difficult, compared with potatoes that can grow in any barren mountains and mountains, wheat is much more delicate to serve. Haode wheat seeds need fertile and good land, although the seeds used by the ancients are not good, but without much fertilization, the land can be used from generation to generation.

But if it is the high-quality wheat seeds that produce thousands of catties per mu of modern shijie seed company, then it means that the fertility of the same land may only support a few years. After a few years of good harvests, if there is no fertilizer to replenish the land, which has been depleted of fertility by high-yield crops, it is necessary to fallow grass and accumulate fertility for several years before it can be restored again.

In this way, the first harvest of high-yielding wheat seeds may look very impressive, but what about the following days? Do you want to cut off the rations of tomorrow for the sake of today's gains? There are no fertilizer factories in Arthur's small country, and the fertilizer transferred from modern Shijie is limited by capacity bottlenecks and is not enough. As for the compost that can be used in ancient times, there is also the silt in the river pond...... Hehe, where is this fertilizer enough! It's not Egypt, and the Avon River isn't the Nile, so you can't send so much free natural fertilizer to Arthur's land for nothing! ”

Wang Qiu smacked his lips and took the conversation and explained. High-yield wheat he didn't let Arthur try to plant, but the more high-yield crops are, the more fertilizer they eat, and those regular brands of high-yield wheat are planted in unfertilized fields, which are simply long leaves and do not tassel.

In fact, he had an even more important reason that he didn't say because he was embarrassed, and that was that he had already spent a lot of money on Arthur and his gang of Brits! Don't want to throw extra money into the water anymore!

At present, the compost on the farms of the Kingdom of Camelot is clumsily piled up by Celtic farmers under the whip of their own, and most of them can only rely on the recovery ability of the land itself. Coupled with the silt caused by the flooding of the river in the summer, the amount of fertilizer is so-so by ancient standards. By modern standards, that's a drop in the bucket. But Wang Qiu is really reluctant to spend more money to buy fertilizer.

- Anyway, the potatoes grown are enough to eat, and as for the trade goods exchanged for furs and timber with the natives of this plane, they are all various industrial products pulled from modern Shijie, and they don't have to consume King Arthur's grain storehouse...... So what do you want to do with such a high grain production?

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Next, Wang Qiu and the others also inspected the pastures and chicken farms near Camelot Castle, and looked at the horses, goats, sheep, cattle, chickens and ducks raised there. Unlike real medieval castles, King Arthur's kingdom did not place much emphasis on knights. Therefore, Camelot Castle does not have many war horses, only about a hundred in total. However, there are quite a few horses pulling carts.

The chickens and ducks raised by the farmers of Castle Carmellot also use a relatively primitive free-range breeding method. The number is very limited, because the traversers cannot provide enough vaccines and antimicrobials to do the intensive breeding of modern chicken farms - which would definitely lead to an outbreak of chicken plague.

Despite this, the farmers under King Arthur were not short of meat. After all, the island of Great Britain is really sparsely populated these days. The population of Britain was only a few hundred thousand -- and many more died of the plague -- than in a large county of later China, so there was game in the wilderness and in the forest. For example, wild deer, wild boar, pheasant, quail, bear, which one can not be eaten? Which one is not tasty? Before, it was not easy to hit the prey, because the iron was expensive, and the peasants could not make up spears, bows and swords at home, but now with the funding of the traverser, not to mention anything else, at least there is no shortage of metal.

In order to promote the construction of a new countryside. Under the persuasion of Professor Yang Wenli, Wang Qiu also tried to build a few biogas digesters here. In general, it is not bad to use, you can light the lamp and cook rice, but the metallurgical level of this era is too poor, and some metal parts can only rely on modern shijie to supply, once it is used for a long time and leads to destruction, and can not be replenished, then these biogas digesters zuihou can only become legends from then on......

In general, because Wang Qiu has been tempered by several time and space battlefield expeditions, he has developed a heart of iron and stone that is so black that he has nothing to say, which is not as innocent, kind, benevolent and simple as when he first traveled through Central America. As a result, Camelot's subjects were far less happy than the Indians of the American Empire. The majority of rural people still live in staggered huts and planks, with no benefits, pensions or childcare benefits. Families with better conditions can wear old military uniforms from the backlog warehouse, mildewy vests, and all kinds of discarded old goods in modern shijie; Families with poor conditions, especially new immigrants who have just fled the famine, can only be put on sacks for a while.

- Of course, although the subjects of the kingdom of Carmellot were treated in the henceforth as sweatshops and black coal kilns, they were as happy as paradise compared to the rest of the countries of Great Britain, especially the barbarian kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons, and at least they could eat potatoes to their heart's content. And where there is no high-yielding crop like potatoes, the Anglo-Saxons harvest an average of four times as much wheat as they sow......

With such a low grain yield, these poor serfs, who had no human rights, were sometimes unable to produce enough food for the lord to eat, let alone feed themselves—so that the ancient working people of the Anglo-Saxon barbarians, who did not bathe or wash their clothes all year round, and whose bodies were so stinky that they were so sick of hunger that their cheeks were thin, their eyes were sunken, and many of them had contracted rickets from malnutrition. When the grain harvest fails, they often need to gnaw grass to satisfy their stomachs, and as a result, their teeth are worn out very badly, and at the age of just thirty or forty, they are already full of missing teeth and leaking air. To add insult to injury, many medieval European farmers who were already very depressed were suffering from ergot poisoning due to hunger...... It was hellish to be a terrible scene.

Therefore, even if the basic treatment given to serfs by the Carmellot Kingdom was only clothed in sacks to keep out the cold, and boiled potatoes without oil and salt were full, it still attracted many poor people to come hungry...... It's a pity that it still doesn't have enough labor force that Wang Qiu hopes to have.

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Although Camelot's agricultural production seems to be thriving, for Wang Qiu, the representative of the investor. These produce don't make much money at all, but they only allow King Arthur's mini-kingdom to keep its daily operations from crumbling and disintegrating in the midst of famine.

-- If it is divided according to the modern enterprise system. In the "Camelot" kingdom, a "Sino-foreign joint venture joint-stock enterprise", Arthur, who wears a crown, is probably equivalent to the general manager, Archmage Merlin is the assistant to the general manager, and Wang Qiu is the shareholder representative...... As for the high-yielding crops, vegetables, fruits, cattle, sheep and ducks produced in this kingdom, they are only used for the daily life of the subjects of the kingdom "employee welfare". The things that can really bring dividends and benefits to shareholders are mainly natural resources such as timber, furs, gold, silver and jewelry, among which wood is the bulk of it.

Therefore. After a cursory tour of the farms and pastures near Camelot Castle, Wang Qiu and the others rode horses or motorcycles along a newly paved gravel road. Rush to Bath City, the largest populous city in King Arthur's territory.

Over the years, the city of Bath went from a dilapidated ruin to a gradual populated population, eventually with the arrival of the residents of Gloucester. It became a thriving town with a population of tens of thousands. Even surpassing the old view of the Roman Empire. The masonry houses, which had been abandoned, were rebuilt again. Wells that have been silted up for a long time, wharves that have been dilapidated for many years, and roads overgrown with grass have also been repaired one after another.

On the day of the market, the Celts in the north and south, the Irish across the sea, and even the Saxon invaders in the east would drive their flocks, cattle, and horses. Take the hides you have recently hunted and come to Bath City to trade. Wang Qiu and other travelers passed through the agents of the Roman remnants of Bath City. Sweet sweets, crystalline salts, spices that make food more delicious, matches, knives, porcelain and glassware that help with daily life, silk as a luxury item, and oral antibiotic pills known as "miracle medicine" are sold...... Despite the bustle of the trade, the population of Britain today is probably about the size of a county in modern China. In terms of the amount of total social wealth, I am afraid that it is not as good as a county in modern China - such a small consumer market really makes the operators feel hopeless.

However, from the perspective of Haode, although the merchant ships of the European continent have not yet visited Arthur's small country, it is said that the Saxons in the east have begun to resell these life-saving medicines and "strange goods" such as silk, spices, and porcelain several times the price, and resell them to the Franks, Vikings, and Goths there...... As long as the sales market can be effectively expanded, Wang Qiu doesn't mind how much profit these second-tier dealers make.

In general, the bazaars of these years were much like the modern suburban markets, consisting of a wood-walled open space in the middle or on the edge of the city, filled with piles of vendors and carts full of goods, and possibly a few shack-like shops, most notably taverns, where shirtless and tattooed barbarian natives could often be seen getting drunk and staggering down the streets.

-- As early as the Age of Discovery, it was a common practice of many trading companies to make the natives addicted to alcohol. Because many of the less civilized natives generally did not need too many luxury goods and daily necessities, those silk, porcelain, glass and tea could not be sold at all by them, and if a large number of rifles and other arms were dumped, it would in turn threaten the trading post itself. Therefore, those black-hearted traders who want to force the natives to trade often have to use their brains on all kinds of addictive hobbies, and opium and spirits are very good choices......

Because smoking opium was more troublesome than drinking, and the price of opium was too expensive, European colonists generally instigated indigenous people to drink heavily in other places, except for the more affluent late Qing China. Once they became addicted to alcohol, they could not quit at all, so once the natives became addicted to alcohol, they became poor creatures that the Western colonizers could exploit at will—the addiction would force them to be cattle and horses, and try to collect everything that could be exchanged for alcohol.

Therefore, Wang Qiu obtained a large amount of cheap blended liquor and red star erguotou from modern shijie, and traded gold, silver and leather goods in the bazaar of Bath.

What was even more immoral was that Archmage Merlin also opened a large tobacco shop in the bazaar of Bath City, selling not opium, of course, but cold-tolerant marijuana that he cultivated himself - the British climate could not grow poppies for opium - and it didn't take long for a miasma of smoke everywhere. Unfortunately, the cultivation of marijuana was too simple, and Merlin did not preserve his marijuana seeds well, and it didn't take long for the results to spread.

Then, with the rapid prosperity of the cannabis cultivation industry in Britain, the "Merlin Tobacco House", which had lost its monopoly profits, had to close its doors. But every time Wang Qiu saw those mountain barbarians wearing animal skins, actually carrying dried hemp leaves in their arms, and after walking a few steps, they tore off a piece of birch bark, wrapped it in tobacco and lit it on fire, and they seemed to have lost something very important in their hearts...... (To be continued......)