144 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEB. 



[ February 21, 1867. 



looks well, 13 most duraMe, keeps its place, and is very in- 

 espensiTc.— B. W. Stannds. 



POTATOES. 



I A"i.wAY3 read the Potato articles of "Upwards and On- 

 WAKD3 " with great pleasure. Still, if I were to purchase all the 

 Potatoes which he commends, I should have no room for Hoses. 



I do not hold the doctrine of finality, or complete Potato 

 perfection ; still, as I nm never without most excellent Po- 

 tatoes " all the year round," I discard and introduce warily. 

 I do not like turning off a servant whose faults I know for one 

 whose faults I have yet to learn. I think we cry up and cry 

 down commodities too hastily. Excellent Potatoes in certain 

 years, and under certain circumstances, turn out occasionally 

 bad. In the year 180") nothing could be more close and ill- 

 flavonred than the old Ashleaf ; and in 18GG the excellent 

 Koyal Ashleaf sent out by Mr. Eivers, though good, was not 

 equal to itself in the year 1865. For this reason it is well to 

 grow more sorts than may be wanted. 



As regards freedom from disease, it completely depends on 

 circumstances. Some years ago the Eev. T. Case, the vicar of 

 Horton, sent me the Ked Ashleaf, warranted to defy disease. 

 Alas ! the tubers were complete pulp. The Grammars (a rough 

 deep-eyed Fortyfold), very good this year, were given me by a 

 blind parishioner under the name of " Eough Eeds." Being a 

 late variety 1 planted them very late, and they escaped the 

 disease from which other Potatoes suffered much. The next 

 year I planted them in a clover ley, on high, chalky ground, 

 where no Potato had been planted for eleven years, and they 

 were pulp. I must here ask " Upwards and Oxw.vbds " to teil 

 me whether the blotches in the leaf are cause or effect. I fancy 

 they are the efl'ect of disease. Except electricity (not an idea of 

 my own ; I detest plagiarism unowned), I do not know what 

 could in the year 181G have affected the Potatoes over the 

 whole world so instantaneously and synchronously. I have 

 never yet been able to discover whether the attack in the first 

 place was in the haulm, or roots and tubers. Jly present 

 theory is (and I must admit that my theories hitherto have 

 been fallacious), is that the visitation of 1846 weakened the 

 cellular tissue, and that Potatoes have not yet recovered from 

 it. Hence seedlings newly raised are frequently advertised as 

 exempt from disease. When the disease broke out I was living 

 at Critchill, and had an acre and half of Early Dugdale in 

 a field which I rented of my late much-esteemed friend, Mr. 

 Sturt, and I sold the crop, about half a crop — i.e., a quarter of a 

 sack a-perch, to him. They were supposed to have been one of 

 the best crops m the neighbourhood — a good poor man's Potato. 

 From that time to this I have been as much perplexed with 

 the Potato disease as about fate. My " rule absolute " 

 about the Potato disease has long been disowned by the 

 chancery of facts, or the fortuitous concurrence of atoms. This 

 being so, as I am hut a " grasshopper " in the presence of 

 " Upwards and Onv,-akps," I wish he would tell me whether 

 the ulcer on the leaf, the visible precursor of misery (for the I 

 cause may be beneath), is cause or effect. As soon as a medical 

 man knows the disease and its seat, he may apply a proper 

 remedy. Napoleon, at St. Helena, encouraged his doctor thus 

 — "We are a machine made to live for a given time. You 

 work in the dark, and thrust your crooked instruments into 

 us, and for once that you relieve us you kill us a hundred 

 times." 



Now, I confess that! have been working in the dark, and I 

 have this year thrust in a crooked instrument. I have planted, 

 beginning February 12ih, under grass, in stony land, 5 inches 

 deep, dressed with dissolved vitriol. Grammars, Eed Robins, 

 Scotch Downs, or Bocks, and Salmon Kidneys, the best of all 

 Potatoes. The vitriol may be useful if the disease is fungoid, 

 for there is no better match for fungi of all kinds ; or it may 

 fail, the disease being of another nature, such as imperfect 

 cellular tissue, or loss of starch, the grand component of a 

 Potato. Still it is good as a revealer of bad Potatoes. My 

 servant's testimony is, " You can tell the diseased tubers even 

 where you can see no disease : they turn blackish within half 

 an hour after application." He showed me one. I could see 

 no disease ; I cut the Potato open, and in the heart of the Po- 

 tato there was the disease. It is also good to keep off centi- 

 pedes, and other insects that live on and exhaust the tubers. I 

 mean to keep this lot on the fiat. I remember forty-five years 

 ago my father had a grassed orchard dug up and planted with 

 Potatoes. They were flat-hoed, but not earthed-up. The crop 

 was larger than I have ever seen since. 



I will now end with Stephen's testimony. " Steeve " is my 

 servant, good and trusty, and this is his testimony — that 

 round white Potatoes produce more than kidneys of any colour, 

 that skulkers left in the groimd all winter produce healthy 

 Potatoes free from disease, that large tubers produce more than 

 small Potatoes, that Potatoes about the size of a hen's egg 

 will weigh 20 lbs. heavier per sack than large Potatoes, that 

 early planting is best, that kidney Potatoes should not be cut 

 or planted till the eye starts ; that digging Potatoes before ripe 

 is a double folly, it does not stop disease, and spoils what would, 

 if ripened, be good ; that Grammars wUl give a heavier crop 

 with little or no manure than any other sort ; and that though 

 for years his Grammars were far sounder than any other, yet 

 this year, out of three sacks stored away, he has not more than 

 one bushel of good ones. The mystery of the Potato disease is, 

 as yet, the great mystery of the natural world. 



The kidney Potatoes, of the Ashleaf race, I shall plant in 

 broken ground, and shall water them early in June. — W. F. 

 EiDCLTFFE, Okt'fonl Fit:2)aiiie. 



HAS A FOREMAN ANY VOICE IN THE 

 MANAGEMENT OF HIS FIRES? 



I AM living in a nobleman's large garden establishment as 

 foreman. The 4th of February was a very wet day, but cleared 

 off towards evening, and, the wind shifting, the stars gave a 

 very bright appearance. Thinking it likely that a frost would 

 occur, I had the fires in the greenhouses lighted. 



I went to the glass houses about half an hour afterwards, 

 found the thermometer standing at 30°, and I ordered the fire 

 to be slackened. At the same time I had a vinery that had 

 been started about three weeks, and in which the Vines had 

 shoots about an inch long. This house was shut up in the 

 afternoon at a temperature of 65° ; on entering it at 8 p.u., I 

 found the thermometer standing at 02°, with a little heat in 

 the pipes. I banked my fire for the temperature to fall to about 

 55° by morning. My master coming out at the time altered 

 all my doings for the night, and by his orders the stove fire 

 was again set burning. The consequence was, on entering the 

 vinery in the morning, a strong fiei-y heat was felt, and instead 

 of finding the thermometer at 55°, it was then standing at 72°. 

 The gardener coming in and finding the temperature so high, 

 ordered air to be given very freely, and in an hour the house 

 was standing at 62°. Do any of your readers think this was 

 correctly treating an early vinery ? I have lived in three other 

 establishments as foreman, and never have seen a vinery 

 treated in this manner before. From a garden boy I was 

 always taught never to put air on for lowering the temperature, 

 but to give it slowly as it was required, and to let the warmest 

 time be in the middle of the day. — A. Suescribeb, H. M. 



[The subject is not devoid of importance, but it is one 

 always unpleasant to meddle with, as no general rule can he 

 advanced as to the relative positions to be occupied by a gar- 

 dener and his foreman and assistants, but each establishment 

 must be left to form rules and regulations for itself. I have 

 no hesitation, however, in submitting the following observations 

 suggested by your case, looking upon it, however, as a one- 

 sided statement: — 



1. Whatever the abilities, the intelligence, and the attention 

 of a foreman or an under gardener, so long as he remains in 

 these positions it is his duty to carry out the wishes and com- 

 mands of the head gardener, as he is the chief responsible 

 party ; just as it is the duty of the head gardener to serve his 

 employer in the way he peculiarly wishes to be served, giving 

 up so far any partialities of his own, to attend chiefly to that 

 which an employer mostly values. 



2. In large places matters will not go on well unless there la 

 a reciprocal feeling betvs-een the head gardener and his assis- 

 tants, and a general wish to make the most of the circum- 

 stances. I have no faith in the old dictum, addressed by a 

 master to a man, " What business have you to think ? " On 

 the other hand, an assistant is valuable just in proportion as 

 it is perceptible that he does think — that he acts fiom thought, 

 and not from mere routine. I have faith also in the old state- 

 ment that two or more are better than one, and in setting 

 about a job the workman may propose a better mode than that 

 at first pointed out by the master ; and in such a case, if wise, 

 the master will adopt the plan of the workman, because thus 

 he will secure a thorough coadjutor, instead of a mere working, 

 looking-to-the-clock man, and because, again, a man feels an 

 interest in making his own plan appear the best by the less 



