ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. . 123 



SWEET POTATOES. 



ALTHOUGH our practice has been more extensive, and ia 

 more skillful, in eating sweet potatoes than in raising them, 

 we yet adventure some remarks : No root can live and 

 grow without food from the leaf; if the tops be permitted 

 to root, so much nutriment is subtracted from the tubers as 

 is diverted to these new roots. Those who are best skilled 

 in their cultivation, raise their vines up so as to detach the 

 roots, but do not twist them round the hill ; which, by crush 

 ing or covering the leaves, would render the vines unhealthy. 

 As to vines of the Cucurbitacce, their fruit not being under 

 ground, it is not necessary that such an amount of pre 

 pared sap should go to the root as if tubers were formed. 

 There is, in such vines, a great liability to disease and 

 injury near the hill. The vines shrink and dry near the 

 base ; and however flourishing the running end may other 

 wise be, it is destroyed. If roots are secured at several 

 points along the vine, we remove the chances of its prema 

 turely dying, without withdrawing any sap necessary for 

 the maturation of its fruit. 



MANAGEMENT OF BOTTOM-LANDS. 



ALMOST every kind of soil requires a management of its 

 own. That proper for clays, and that proper for bottom 

 lands, cannot be interchanged. Bottom lands are usually 

 composed largely of vegetable matter and sand ; and are 

 therefore light, and easy to work ; yet, as they are now 

 managed, they admit a less variety of crops than the 

 tougher and more unmanageable clay lands. 



BOTTOM-LANDS FOE COEN. Our corn-lands, strictly so 

 called, consist of rich intervales and river bottoms. On 

 these corn is raised year after year, without manuring, fal- 



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