262 CROP GROWING A.ND CROP FEEDING 



EVAPORATING SWEET POTATOES. 



There is no vegetable grown that is so easily and rapidly dried as the 

 sweet potato. Cut in slices and evaporated in any of the porta- 

 ble evaporators, they can be kept in sacks in winter without diffi- 

 culty, and can be made into a variety of dishes and puddings, 

 after being soaked over night to restore them; or they can be 

 pulverized and used for the many nice dishes that the Southern house- 

 wife knows so well how to prepare. We have often thought that if some one 

 would go into the business of evaporating and pulverizing the sweet potato, 

 and then pack them in neat papers, such as corn starch is packed in the North, 

 a large and profitable trade could be established, especially if the packages 

 gave the recipes for custards and pies and such things that the sweet potato 

 makes so perfectly. There is a great opening in the South for the invest- 

 ment of capital in such a business, for the potatoes can be contracted for as 

 cheaply as Irish potatoes are contracted for at the starch factories in Maine. 



YIELDS OF SWEET POTATOES FROM LARGE AND SMALL TUBERS. 



The experiments at the Texas Station show that the sweet potato is just 

 apt to produce large crops from small tubers, or rather tuberous roots, as 

 from large ones. In fact, the small roots gave the largest yields. Cuttings 

 of the vines set in June were usually smoother potatoes than those raised from 

 the spring plants. They are also much less liable to disease, and hence are 

 better for the seed for the following year. Early plants are set for the pur- 

 pose of giving cuttings for the late crop. 



The Texas Station also gives the following results from the application 

 of fertilizers to the sweet potato crop : 



Plat No. Yield bushels. 



1. Nitrate of soda, 460 Ibs 128.33 



2. Muriate of potash, 150 Ibs 146.47 



3. Bone black, 300 Ibs 207.66 



4. Sulphate of potash, 200 Ibs 208.79 



5. No fertilizer. 201.17 



6. Cotton seed meal, 500 Ibs 194.67 



7. Barnyard manure and wood ashes, 20,000 Ibs 179.85 



8. Special sweet potato fertilizer, 600 Ibs 222.50 



9. No fertilizer 219.71 



10. Nitrate of soda, 460 Ibs., sulphate of potash, 200 Ibs 166.87 



11. Nitrate of soda, 460 Ibs, muriate of potash, 150 Ibs 170.77 



