SWEET POTATOES. 45 



Now take your sweet potato, and place them near- 

 ly touching each other ; then cover them with rich 

 mould about four inches deep, and by the middle of 

 May, or the first of June, your potatoes will sprout 

 and come through the ground from eight to ten inch- 

 es. Potatoes at this time will have no roots. Your 

 ground should be prepared and put , in perfect order, 

 and if a sandy soil, manure it with hog manure. 

 Make your hill about eighteen or twenty inches high, 

 and so soon as your ground is in order, then go to 

 your hot bed and break up one side, from which take 

 up the potatoes carefully. The sprouts should not 

 be broken off. Take them to the hill, dig a hole in 

 the top deep enough to set in the potato, and leave 

 the top of the sprout about three inches above the top 

 of the hill. Then the potato will commence grow- 

 ing again, and as soon as your hills become grassy, 

 you should pick it off carefully from the top and weed 

 down the sides two or three timek, or until the vines 

 begin to cover the hills. Then take your hoe and hill 

 up those hills, until you nearly cover the tops of the 

 vines. Treat your hills in this manner two or three 

 times, and your cultivation will be finished. By the 

 first of September, if the weather be seasonable, your 

 potatoes will be large enough for the table. So soou 

 as the frost kills the tops of the vines, you may dig 

 them, as they will then cease to grow. It appears 

 that frost is fatal to all vegetation, and if so powerful 

 on vegetation, why not on the soil which produces 

 that vegetation ? 



