Book VI. THE POTATOE. 779 



4834. The latejield varieties in most repute are 



The red-nose kidney. Black skin, white interior, and good. 



Large kidney. Purple, very mealy, productive, and keeps well. 



Bread fruit, raised in 1810, from seed, and esteemed one of Red apple, mealv, keeps the longest of any. 



the best field jwtatoes ; being white, mealy, well tasted, Tartan, or purple and white skinned, an esteemed Scotch 

 and prolific. polatoe, prolific, mealy, exceedingly well tasted, and keeps 



Lancashire pink eye, good. well. 



4835. The vaneties grown exclusively as food for live-stock are 



The yam or Surinam potatoe ; large, red and white skinned. The ox noble ; large, yellow without and within, very prolific, 



and the interior veined with red ; flavor disagreeable, and not fit to eat. 



not such as to admit of its being used as human food. It The late champion ; large and prolific, white skinned, and 



succeeds best on heavy lands. may be used as human food. 



4836. New varieties of potatoes are procured with the greatest ease. The following 

 directions are given in a useful work on this plant. Pluck off the apples when the stalk 

 has ceased to vegetate and is drying up. The seed being then fully ripe, break the apple 

 in a hair sieve, wash the pulp clean from the seeds, and dry them in the sun ; then sow 

 the seed in beds in March, and take the potatoes up in October. They will attain the 

 size of nutmegs, or at most lie no larger than walnuts. Select the fairest and best, and 

 keep them secure from frost by thoroughly drying, and intermixing, and covering them 

 with sifted wood or coal-ashes. Plant them in April following, at the distance of fifteen 

 inches asunder ; and when the plant is two inches high, hill them with fresh earth. This 

 may be done several times, constantly taking care to keep them clean from weeds. Ob- 

 serve when the stalks decay ; some will be found decaying much sooner than others j 

 these are the early kind, but those that decay last are the sort which comes late. Take 

 them up in rotation as they ripen, and let the produce of each potatoe be kept separate 

 till the next year. Such as come early, may be tried as soon as they are taken up, by- 

 dressing one or two ; should they be approved, the remainder may be preserved ; but 

 those which are late should not be tried before January or February, for it will be found 

 that the late kind of potatoes, newly raised, are very soft, and cut like soap, until they 

 have been hoarded a certain time, when they become mealy. Under each stalk you may 

 expect to find a gallon of potatoes. Those planted the third year may, perhaps, produce 

 two sacks ; and their increase afterwards will be very considerably greater. Thus it 

 takes full three years to form an adequate judgment of potatoes raised from seed, and, 

 after all, if one in ten succeed so as to be worth preserving, it is as much as can be 

 reasonably expected. 



4837. Some of the earlier sorts of potatoes do not blossom, and consequently do not, 

 under ordinary management, produce seeds. To procure blossoms and seeds from 

 these, it is necessary, from time to time, during the early part of the summer, to remove 

 the earth from the roots of the plants, and pick off the tubers, or potatoes as they begin 

 to form. By thus preventing the strength of the plant from being employed in forming 

 tubers at the root, it will flow into the leaves and herbage, and produces blossoms and 

 apples. Knight, the president of the Horticultural Society, by adopting this prac- 

 tice, succeeded in procuring seeds from some sorts of potatoes, which had never before 

 produced blossoms ; and from these seeds he raised excellent varieties, some hardy and 

 less early, others small and very early. He farther impregnated the blossoms produced 

 by these early potatoes with other sorts, some early and some late (in the way in which 

 graziers cross the breeds of cattle to improve the offspring), and he succeeded in pro- 

 ducing varieties, more early than late sorts, and more hardy and prolific than any early 

 potatoes he had seen. These he cultivated in his fields, deeming them preferable tc 

 all other sorts as admitting of later planting and earlier removal, and this practice he 

 justly considered as highly favorable to the succeeding crop of wheat. 



4838. In choosing a sort or sorts of potatoes from the numerous varieties which are 

 to be found every where, perhaps the best way is, for the selector to procure samples 

 and taste them, and to fix on what best pleases his palate. The shaw is one of the 

 best early potatoes for general field culture ; and the kidney and bread-fruit are good 

 sorts to come in in succession. The Lancashire pink is also an excellent potatoe, and we 

 have never in any part of the British isles tasted a potatoe equal in mealiness and flavor 

 to this variety, as cultivated round Prescot, near Liverpool. The red apple and tartan 

 are of undoubted preference as late or long keeping potatoes. The yam is decidedly 

 the best potatoe for stock, and will produce from twelve to fifteen tons per acre. 



4839. The soil in which the potatoe thrives best is a light loam, neither too dry nor too 

 moist, but if rich, it is so much the better. They may, however, be grown well on 

 inany other sorts of lands, especially those of the mossy, moory, and other similar kinds, 

 where they are free from stagnant moisture, and have had their parts well broken down 

 by culture, and a reasonable portion of manure added. The best flavored table potatoes 

 are almost always produced from a newly broken up pasture ground not manured ; or 

 from any new soil, as the site of a grubbed up copse or hedge, or the site of old buildings 

 or roads. Repeated on the same soil they very generally lose their flavor, 'i'he yam 

 produces the largest crops on a loamy and rather strong soil, though it will grow well 

 on any that is deep ploughed and well manured. 



