SWEET POTATAOES 259 



vinos, if left on, will soon affect the roots. Choose sunny and warm, dry 

 weather for digging. Throw a furrow from each side with a small plow and 

 then take the potatoes out carefully in whole bunches, with the forked hoe. 

 Lay them carefully along the rows to dry in the sun, and on no account allow 

 them to thrown in heaps, as that will be sure to bruise them. Gather in 

 baskets and haul to where they are to be stored, handling at all times as care- 

 fully as eggs. The storing is the most important thing in the keeping of 

 the crop. 



KEEPING SWEET POTATOES IN WINTER. 



This has always been the great difficulty North and South. Where the 

 crop is grown on a large scale there should always be a building especially 

 constructed for the purpose of wintering the crop. With such a building as 

 we will hereafter describe the keeping in winter is comparatively easy and 

 certain. Late in August, 1900, I met a gentleman in South Carolina to 

 whom I had given directions for a potato house. He told me that the house 

 had been a great success, and that he was then feeding hogs on sweet potatoes 

 a year old, grown in the summer of 1899. The common practice in the 

 South is to keep the potatoes in "banks," or hills. When well done, and the 

 potatoes are carefully handled before storing, this may be done with very 

 good chance for success. Our method of hilling is as follows. The banks 

 are made, if possible, under a shed open to the south. If no such shelter is 

 available we make a shed at least to keep the rain off. A thick layer of pine 

 straw, gathered in dry weather and kept dry, is laid on the ground, and the 

 potatoes piled in conical heaps on this straw about 25 bushels in a pile. The 

 piles are then thickly covered with the same dry pine leaves, and left till 

 they go through the "sweat," which they are certain to take when stored. 

 After they have dried off and the weather is getting cool, we cover the heaps 

 with earth lightly, and gradually increase the cover as the weather gets cold, 

 till they have a foot of earth over them. As the shed keeps the rain off the 

 dry earth will keep out' any frost, and if the potatoes were free from disease 

 and were carefully handled in storing they will usually keep well. 



CONSTRUCTION OF A POTATO HOUSE. 



A heated building for the keeping of sweet potatoes is by far the best 

 method for their preservation. Such a house should not be over ten feet 

 wide, and may be as long as needed, but it will be better not to make it over 

 fifty feet long, if heated by one furnace. Height of the walls is a matter of 



