260 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



convenience. The side walls and the roof should be made double and packed 

 with dry sawdust. Along the roof a ventilator should be made, which can be 

 operated from one end with the same apparatus used in the ventilation of a 

 greenhouse. Shelves should be made with slatted bottoms, on both sides of 

 the house, four feet wide and far enough apart to store the potatoes a foot 

 deep. In a shed at the north end build a brick furnace and take from it a 

 brick flue straight through the middle of the house to a chimney at the 

 further end. Planks can be laid above this flue as a walk in filling and to be 

 removed before any firing is done. Put the potatoes carefully on the shelv- 

 ing, and then start a fire in the furnace and run the temperature up to 90 

 degrees until all the sweat is dried off the potatoes, keeping the ventilator open 

 slightly all the time to let off steam. When the potatoes are thoroughly dry, 

 close the house and then only in very cold nights may there be any need for 

 more fire heat. So. long as the temperature can be kept up to 50 degrees 

 there will be no need for fire heat, and if the walls are well deadened, in the 

 Sou.th this will be easy. In such a house it is perfectly practicable to keep 

 sweet potatoes till the new crop of the following year is large enough for the 

 table. The whole secret in keeping sweet potatoes is to handle them with care 

 and then dry them off as completely as possible, then maintain a temperature 

 of 50 degrees during the winter. 



SWEET POTATOES NORTH AND SOUTH. 



There is a wide difference in the character of the sweet potatoes preferred 

 by people in the North and in the South. Those who grow potatoes for the 

 Northern markets are compelled to grow potatoes which no Southerner will 

 eat if he can help it. The Northern market demands a smooth, yellow potato, 

 with very dry flesh, while the Southerner wants the sweeter sugary and jelly- 

 like "yam." The Southern yam is not a true yam, but merely a sweet variety 

 of the sweet potato. Tastes of people North and South have been largely 

 formed by their different methods of cooking the roots. Northern people 

 steam or boil sweet potatoes, and the Southern yam is worthless for any such 

 cooking, while the dry and chokey yellow potatoes sold North are well adapted 

 to such a method. A yellow Nansemond, or "Yellow Bark," as they are called 

 in the South, if cooked by baking as the Southern people always cook sweet 

 potatoes is such a chokey article that it is difficult to eat, while the Southern 

 yam steamed, will lose its sugary character and be a mass of mush. If the 

 Northern users of sweet potatoes would cook the Southern potatoes as the 

 Southern people cook them they would soon find that the dry Nansemonds are 



