POTATOES. 335 



deficient in farinaceous quality. A cool, moist soil will produce larger potatoes, but in a 

 northerly climate a warmer soil is to be preferred, as being less liable to injure the quality. 



A calcareous soil yields a potato of fine quality, and can generally be depended upon for 

 the production of a good crop, and when such soil contains but little lime or plaster, this 

 should be used in fertilizing. Early potatoes will mature much quicker in a warm, light soil 

 than a heavy one, and also present a brighter and cleaner appearance when dug. Old sod- 

 land, especially clover sod, is excellent for this crop. It should be turned under in the fall 

 (August or September being the best time), and lightly plowed and harrowed in the spring. 

 Lands should never be plowed while wet and heavy, as it is an injury to the soil, and is labor 

 lost. Mr. A. Hyde, of Massachusetts, says: 



&quot; The inverted sod of an old pasture is one of the best for potatoes. With a little well- 

 rotted compost harrowed in thoroughly upon such a sod, to give the plants a good start, we 

 have raised good crops upon comparatively poor soil. An old pasture contains much vege 

 table matter, and the tubers delight in the mellow bed which such a soil affords, and come 

 out in the fall clean and healthy. We have also raised good potatoes in a mucky soil appar 

 ently having little but vegetable matter in it. This can only be done in a dry season. In a 

 wet summer the muck retains too much water, and has the same influence on the tubers as 

 compact clay. Leached ashes should also be put in the hill with potatoes, when planted on 

 muck, to furnish the inorganic matter in which muck is deficient. A compost made of muck 

 and leached ashes is one of the best possible manures for the potato. The muck makes the 

 soil porous, and furnishes a bed in which the potato delights as much as our mothers formerly 

 did in a feather-bed. Sufficient potash is left in the leached ashes to furnish this essential 

 ingredient of the potato. 



Sand soils are often as much too open to atmospheric influences as clay soils are closed 

 against them. Sand both cools and heats too rapidly, and feels the sudden changes of tem 

 perature which are so trying to the potato. Still, on poor, sandy soils good crops of potatoes 

 can be raised by the aid of muck and ashes. The perfect drainage and slow growth secure 

 this result. The seed should be planted deeply and cultivated on a level, so that the tubers 

 may be less affected by the sudden changes of temperature. We have known potatoes to rot 

 as badly on sand as on clay when planted superficially and hilled up in contracted hills.&quot; 



One of the leading agricultural writers of the &quot; Country Gentleman &quot; expresses the fol 

 lowing facts and opinions respecting potato culture : 



&quot; From such facts as have come to my notice, I am led to the conclusion that when pota 

 toes, and, indeed, all, or nearly all vegetables, and perhaps the cereals, which have originated 

 in cool climates, are grown under a warmer latitude than where they make the strongest and 

 best development, they require a soil very much stronger in the inorganic elements of plant- 

 food, such as potash, lime, magnesia, and phosphoric acid, and demand also to be grown 

 wider apart, one from the other, because, perhaps, the extra stimulating forces of a hot cli 

 mate shorten the period of growth, and there must not only be room enough for the feeding 

 roots, but the soil must be full of plant-food. Going South, one notices that nearly all com 

 mon northern vegetables have a tendency to grow above ground, and I was told that unless 

 the soil is heavily manured with stable manure, it is nearly impossible to get cabbages to 

 head, turnips to bottom, or potatoes to come to full growth. In the truck patches about 

 Mobile, where cabbages are planted out in November and potatoes in February, an experi 

 enced grower informed me that his success with cabbages and potatoes was just in proportion 

 to the amount of stable manure and cotton-seed meal he used in the case of the cabbages, and 

 potash in the form of the ash of cotton-seed hulls, in an incredible quantity, was absolutely 

 essential to success with the potato crop. Perhaps the absence of vegetable gardens in the 

 South, which so forcibly strikes the northern observer, is quite as much due to the want of 

 manure (on account of the limited .quantity of stock of all kinds, which is seldom yarded and 

 rarely stabled) as to any indisposition to do the work of successful truck patching. 



