278 POTATOES FOR 1849. 



early planting, and early removal from the soil, are by far the 

 most important points. Many are deterred from this proceeding 

 from an idea that potatoes thus early are only fit for the table 

 for a few weeks. To say that they will keep as firm until May 

 or June as the old red or pink-eyed class, is indeed to attempt to 

 prove too much. Nevertheless I can, I conceive, point to a 

 course of management which will ensure very excellent and 

 sound potatoes until the month of April, by which period we 

 shall have turned our backs fairly on the winter, and the rising 

 spring will bring increase of both hopes and produce. 



It is a very common practice, especially with early potatoes, 

 to throw them on a barn or outhouse floor, or in what is termed 

 the potato-hole. It is common also for our London dealers to 

 expose wares of this kind in baskets at the door of the shop. 

 Now this course I must suggest strikes at once at the root of 

 both the keeping as well as the eating properties of not only 

 potatoes but vegetables in general. The great difference there- 

 fore between vegetables thus exposed and those fresh from the 

 garden is proverbial. It is well known that certain conditions 

 are absolutely necessary, in a greater or less degree, with all 

 vegetables, in order to preserve them as fresh as possible. The 

 principal of these are as follow : — 



1. Freedom from fermentation. 



2. A cool atmosphere. 



3. A slight degree of humidity in the air, 



4. An exemption from much light. 



In addition to these points, which in the main, with a few trifling 

 exceptions, apply to both tubers and ordinary vegetables, I would 

 urge on behalf of the tubers an exclusion of the immediate action 

 of the atmosphere. 



These principles being admitted, it follows that the exposure 

 plan is fundamentally wrong ; and it becomes the public to con- 

 sider, under our present trying circumstances, whether a good 

 crop of early potatoes may be secured ; and whether, by a due 

 attention to the above principles, a reserve of this national root 

 may be provided until the terrors of winter are passed away. 

 Tliis brings me to the point I wish to press on the attention of 

 all parties interested in the potato affair (and who is not ?), viz. 

 the getting an unusual breadth of the very early kinds into the 

 ground by the middle of March ; and, in addition, taking them 

 from the soil as soon as full-sized, and storing them in pits by 

 a mode I will suggest in the course of these remarks. 



The ash-leaved kidney is still undoubtedly one of the best 

 potatoes in the kingdom -indeed the best of all for veiy early 

 purposes, provided the seed is carefully preserved, and fermenta- 



