LECTURE VIII 



PROFITABLE CULTURE 



Boot Crops, Tojnatoes, Mushrooms, and 

 Fruit Trees 



HAVING referred to the smaller kinds of fruits, and 

 to vegetables that are either grown for cooking in a 

 green state, or using as salads, the larger growing 

 fruits now demand attention, with the most useful 

 of our root crops. 



Potatoes. Of root crops the potato is altogether 

 the most important, not only because it is an indis- 

 pensable article of food upon every dinner table, from 

 the labourer's cottage to the palace of the Queen, but 

 also because it is a profitable crop, when judgment 

 and skill are exercised in its cultivation. Not diffi- 

 cult is it to understand this if we compare results. 

 The cost of growing an acre of potatoes in this country 

 may be quoted at 10. It is sometimes a little 

 more, or less. If the crop is a fair one and is of late 

 potatoes, it will realize from 20 to ,30. In a large 

 potato-growing district in Lincolnshire, hundreds of 

 aores were sold before digging (in 1891), at from 23 

 to 30 an acre, for such varieties as Magnum Bonum 

 and Button's Abundance ; but some acres of Heading 

 Giant realized 40 an acre. This proved the best 



