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TJic Country Gcntlcmahs Magazine 



ON THE STORING OF ROOT CROPS. 



TO many of our readers the above title 

 will be suggestive of many consider- 

 ations, and of thoughts not by any means 

 pleasant. For seldom have the farmers been 

 called upon to enter a season, the labours of 

 which, at all times important and demanding 

 the utmost care, are this year rendered more 

 pressing from the prospects before them of being 

 able to meet with ditliculty, if to meet at all, 

 the demands which their stock will make upon 

 them for their usual root food ; which their 

 fields have not yielded, or if yielded, only in 

 a miserably small proportion. The labour 

 of storing the roots will, on many a farm this 

 year, be reduced to a minimum, for the pain- 

 fully prosaic reason that the roots are not 

 there in usual abundance. Still, if the labour 

 for this reason is less, the care with which the 

 labour is performed is demanded all the 

 more. Waste through labour carelessly per- 

 formed or altogether neglected, is at all times 

 to be avoided, but a little waste may be 

 sustained without being materially felt in 

 times of plenty, when the fields are rich 

 with their stores of roots ; but in times like 

 those through which we are passing, and will 

 still have to pass, every waste is a loss 

 which cannot possibly be replaced, and be- 

 comes a matter of the most pressing moment, 

 to be averted or avoided if possible. These 

 times are a realization of the proverb, " Hob- 

 son's choice," for it is not this root, or some 

 other root, but it is this or none, so com- 

 pletely, in some instances, do farmers find 

 themselves thrown upon one kind of feeding 

 root only as a resource, and of that only in 

 minimum of weight. 



All the more necessary, therefore, is it for 

 the farmer to see that he can make the most 

 of what he has, by storing them up in the 

 best mode, and to see, moreover, that that 

 mode is carried out in the best way ; for a 

 plan may be a good one, and yet it may be 

 •carelessly realized. Good work must go 



along with good design if perfection is re- 

 quired. 



Although scarcely what may be called a 

 stock-feeding root — taking at least not quite 

 the high place in the estimation of the stock- 

 feeders as the turnip or the mangold — still, as 

 the potato is a most important root, viewed in 

 many aspects, and as it comes naturally 

 under the care of the farmer, the first 

 amongst the root croi)s of the farm, we shall 

 direct attention to a few points connected 

 with its harvesting and storing. 



Potatoes are taken up by three methods, 

 none of which need take up our attention for 

 any space, as our remarks, as will be seen from 

 the tide, are to be most closely connected with 

 the storing of roots. The three methods are, 

 the hand-fork or graip ; the " brander " at- 

 tached to an ordinary plough body, from 

 which the mould-board has been removed ; 

 and third, by a potato-digging machine. 

 Where admissible, hand labour is unquestion- 

 ably the best, if it is conscientiously done ; for 

 potato gathering — we use the last word ad- 

 visedly, to distinguish it from the effects of 

 careless working, which is potato leaving — is, 

 like turnip thinning, a matter not merely 

 mechanical, but is one requiring the exercise 

 of some mind and judicious care. It should 

 be remembered, that if all the potatoes are 

 not removed from the soil, that the future 

 plants from such potatoes will be simply 

 weeds amongst the crop which follow — we 

 say weeds, if that definition of a " weed " is the 

 right one, which says, that " a weed is any plant 

 in the wrong place." Manual labour is, how- 

 ever, not at all times — properly speaking 

 not often admissible — hence one or other of 

 the two methods already alluded to have to 

 be employed. As between the merits of the 

 two, the plough with its brander or the potato- 

 digging machine, we do not here propose to 

 enter. 



When the potatoes are got out, and spread 



