CHAPTER XXVIII. 

 POTATOES. 



THE POTATO. Solatium tuberosum. 



French, pomme de terre; German, kartoffel; Dutch, aardappel; Danish, 

 jordepeeren; Italian, patata; Spanish and Portuguese, patatas. 



THE SWEET POTATO. Convolvulus batatas. 

 French, patate douce; Italian, patata; Spanish and Portuguese, batata. 



Potatoes may be grown everywhere in California without irri- 

 gation, except on strictly arid plains and deserts, and it needs but 

 slight watering to enable the light but rich soils of the arid regions 

 to surpass the naturally moist lands both in the size and quality of 

 their produce. Some of the grandest potatoes ever grown in the 

 state have been taken from light, warm soils whose natural growth 

 was sagebrush and other desert flora. The superiority of the higher, 

 lighter lands, either with adequate rainfall or irrigation, to the moist 

 lowlands of the interior river bottoms or the coast valleys, have 

 been clearly recognized during recent years. In the earlier days, 

 the coast and interior river bottoms were supposed to be, par ex- 

 cellence, the potato regions, and their products were transported 

 great distances to interior uplands which were thought to be unfit 

 for the plant. Now the choicest potatoes are grown in these places 

 and the production in the older regions has decreased, though the 

 potato still constitutes an important crop. The present situation is, 

 that the potato fields may be seen everywhere from the skirts of 

 the cliffs which look down upon the ocean, along the bottoms and 

 sides of the coast valleys, on the reclaimed lands and benches of 

 the great interior rivers, up the slopes of the foothills and in the 

 mountain valleys of the Sierra Nevada and out beyond, upon the 

 stretches of sagebrush, wherever water can be had to turn the 

 desert into a garden. California has a capacity for potato pro- 

 duction beyond the ability of any available market to handle, and 

 though a few years ago it seemed likely that our climatic advantages 

 in early production would give us command of distant consumption 

 at certain times of the year, it has since been shown that much less 

 can be profitably done in this direction than was anticipated. There 

 have been in some years very large shipments at reduced freight 

 rates when the eastern production was deficient, but the potato is 

 ordinarily too cheap an article to endure the cost of long transpor- 

 tation. In 1916 California was eighth in the rank of the United 

 States in potato production, with 10,575,000 bushels grown on 

 75,000 acres, with a farm value for the crop of $14,805,000. The 

 production was about the same as during the preceding five years but 

 the valuation was nearly doubled by war prices. The record yield 



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