POTATO CULTUBE. 39 



Nearly forty years ago I used to hill potatoes in father's 

 garden. Father used to insist on my making the hills large 

 and dishing, so as to ct catch the rain." When I began farm- 

 ing I remembered the lesson, and noticed, also, that other 

 people hilled their potatoes, and so I did likewise. If I had 

 been asked why I did so, I should certainly have preached 

 the catch- the-rain theory, with perfect assurance that it was 

 sound doctrine. But with all due respect to our fathers and 

 other people, I can not help thinking now that this plan 

 was not in accordance with common sense. Advocates of 

 this way seem to think the roots are all in the center of the 

 hill, right under the tops. JBut, what are the facts V If you 

 will wash out a hill in mellow soil, you will find, before the 

 tops are half grown, that the little rootlets have crossed and 

 recrossed all the space between the rows, and, of course, 

 they want their water as well as food, just as much there as 

 under the hills. If the surface of the ground is kept level, 

 or nearly so, a shower soaks in all over alike, and each root 

 gets its share. If the seed was put in moderately deep, and 

 the surface is kept nearly level, and constantly stirred, the 

 crop is in the best shape, not only for catchipg rain, but to 

 endure hot dry weather one of its greatest enemies. Sup- 

 pose one hills up his potatoes with a shovel-plow, what does 

 he do V He piles the mellow earth, which should make a 

 mulch all over the surface, up about the hills. This is well, 

 perhaps, if he could get as much more to put in between the 

 rows again ; but instead he leaves this space (where a part 

 of the roots are), bare, hard, and exposed to the hot sun. If 

 he should cultivate it again he would injure the roots, which 

 are now at the surface (not a few also were entirely destroy- 

 ed by the plowing), and the soil in the hills will certainly dry 

 out more than if it were down nearly level, and protected by 

 a mulch of fine earth. Some think that the crop must be 

 hilled up, or they will grow out of the ground and be injured 

 by the sun. Alter raising many thousands of bushels with 

 but very trifling hilling, 1 do not find as large a proportion 



