The Sweet Potato and its Cultivation. 



235 



The latter is the method which is principally adopted wlierever sweet 

 potato culture is carried on in the Union of South Africa. In the 

 northern United States the sprouted slips are employed for the main 

 crop while the runners are used only to provide the seed tubers for 

 the following season; south of Virginia, however, the main crop is 

 grown from runner cuttings ; sufficient tubers are planted in the first 

 instance to jirovide slips for about one-eighth of the area to be 

 eventually planted. When these slips develop runners, enough 

 Clottings are made to plant the rest of the field. Good sweet potato 

 land in the United States will readily support 10,000 plants per acre, 

 and wlitn everything is in good condition from 7000 to 10,000 slips 

 per day, or one acre, may be planted by three workers (fig. 2), i.e. 

 a boy going ahead to drop plant slips on the ridges, a second operator 

 following with a dibble (fig. 3) to make holes to receive the slips, 

 while a third inserts the plants and closes up the holes again. When 

 a large acreage has been planted, the work is greatly facilitated by 

 the use of transplanting machines (fig. 4), which under reasonably 

 favourable conditions may plant from 3 to 4 acres of sweet potato 

 slips per day. 



Fig. 4. - Sweet Potato Transplanting Machine. 



Notwithstanding their proximity to the sea, large portions of the 

 George and adjacent Divisions, where sweet potatoes are cultivated, 

 are subject to frosts. Further inland, this condition is accentuated. 

 Hence such districts are unable to propagate fresh crops of sweet 

 potatoes from those of the preceding year, because the frost nips all 

 the young shoots before there is any possibility of their developing 

 into vines or ^runners. On Mr. Robertson's farm, although frost 

 does prevail on a considerable extent thereof, about twenty acres 

 seem to be quite immune, and on this frost-free stretch luxuriant 

 runners are formed without restraint. The result is that from all 

 parts of the Union, far and near, requests for supplies of runners 

 come streaming in season after season — demands more numerous, at 

 times, than the potentialities of the season's crop can cope with. As 

 an instance, it may be mentioned that within an hour of my arrival 

 on the farm, on the 2Tth September, 50 bags of sweet potato runners 

 were dit^patched to the railway siding, three empty trucks were tele- 

 phoned for to Mossel Bay, and at least two fresh orders had to be 

 declined. 



