240 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



of the state is held by the Boa Vista ranch of El Dorado county, 

 where a selected acre produced 47,254 pounds of merchantable po- 

 tatoes and 2559 pounds of culls and received the award by the 

 State Horticultural Commission in 1915. 



Situations. Though, as has been stated, the potato grows 

 wherever adequate moisture is assured, there is much difference 

 in the times of the year at which maturity is attained. Though the 

 potato is a tender plant it will endure light frosts, nor does it al- 

 ways yield its life when the frost blights the foliage. Dormant 

 buds lower on the stem develop into a new top growth. It is, there- 

 fore, possible to secure fall and even winter growth in places where 

 a strictly tender plant like the bean would perish. Where only 

 light frosts occur and where irrigation is provided to supplement 

 rainfall, it is possible to have new potatoes all the year and to bring 

 to edible condition three crops successively on the same ground 

 within a twelve month, though it is, of course, better to let the 

 potato take its place in a rotation. 



New Potatoes. The first new potatoes from a California point 

 of view, would be the crop that comes with the first green peas, 

 counting July 1 as the beginning of the year. In fact, in the San 

 Francisco district, the first potatoes and peas come from the same 

 localities. They make their growth in the fall from planting on 

 ground well soaked by irrigation in July and August. The regions 

 for this work are those in which fall frosts are light or do not 

 occur at all the thermal belts at different elevations on the hill- 

 sides both on the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada, also on the 

 warm interior plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, 

 but not usually on the river bottoms of large valleys nor on the 

 low places in small valleys. Owing, however, to the partial resist- 

 ance to frost of the potato, there are very wide areas both on the 

 coast and in the interior of central and southern California, where 

 the fall growth of potatoes is safe and worth wider attention than 

 is given to it. Where irrigation may be had to start the seed well 

 the fall rains usually carry on the growth. 



Fall Crop in the Valley Garden. Starting potatoes in the 

 autumn in the interior valley has some difficulties. Old seed from 

 cold storage rots badly when transferred to the soil under a July 

 and August sun, and new crop seed may lie long dormant or rot 

 also. A plan which works well in small plantings for home use is 

 described by W. T. Kirkman, of Merced, in this way : 



I conceived the idea of sprouting the potatoes and transplanting somewhat 

 after the manner of sweet potato planting. I procured a quantity of well- 

 matured small Early Rose potatoes. I spread them in a plant shed, one and two 

 layers deep and covered with two or three inches of sand. One part I covered 

 with sawdust (old chaff will do). I kept this bed well watered by using the 

 sprinkler on it daily. In three or four weeks sprouts began to appear. These 

 I extracted carefully with the parent potato attached and planted at once. 

 I went through this bed at intervals of a week apart, four times. For each 

 of these plantings I had to flood a strip three or four days in advance, and 



