34 SECOND THOUSAND QUESTIONS IN AGRICULTURE 



It would be necessary to plant very much later at Paso Robles because 

 of the spring frosts, and whether the season is long enough to get a 

 full development of the plant and drying in the open air, as they do in 

 Orange county, before frosts in the autumn, would be the point to be 

 determined. Peppers are started in the seed bed and plants set out 

 in rows far enough apart for horse cultivation, say, three or four feet, 

 so that the ground may be kept well cultivated during the growing 

 season. If you cultivate one way, the plants can stand two feet apart 

 in the rows. Grown in a good locality and handled expertly, the crop 

 is sometimes quite profitable, but the demand is limited and the Ana- 

 heim district seems to have no difficulty in fully supplying it. For 

 these reasons also, you should proceed carefully. 



Bell Peppers in Winter. 



Will you tell me when and how to plant bell peppers for home use 

 by the end of February and first part of April? 



Peppers will only stand light frosts and will only hold over in nearly 

 frostless places. This they are most apt to do in what are called the 

 frostless belts, near the coast in southern California. If you box in a 

 few plants with boards and cloth cover you may get fruit at these dates 

 from holdover plants, grown the previous summer, unless you are in 

 a very frosty place. 



Aerial Potatoes. 



What causes the tubers on the potato plant instead of below the 

 ground? This plant appeared in a small patch of potatoes and was 

 the only one to act so. There was no sign of any tubers below the sur- 

 face of the ground. 



The plant has "aerial tubers," some of them quite two inches in 

 length. They come about in this way: normally the the potato tuber 

 is an enlargement of an underground stem, formed by the action of the 

 return flow of the sap of the plant. The upward flow of sap is largely 

 through ducts in the central parts of the aerial stems. The downward 

 flow of sap, after its elaboration by the leaf-surfaces, is through the tis- 

 sue which lies just under the skin or bark of the stem and it deposits 

 its burden in the tuber underground. When this tissue is dried or 

 injured in some way so that the return flow of sap cannot pass along 

 to making tubers underground it goes to work above the injuries and 

 makes tubers in the air. The tubers are simply modified stems, either 

 above or below ground, as conditions may determine. When tubers form 

 above there are none below and, for the reason stated, there cannot be. 

 Injury to the stem may be mechanical such as a scrape with the hoe, 

 the work of an insect or a local disease zone, perhaps. Fortunately, it 

 is of rare occurrence. 



Potatoes After Corn. 



What is the best method to use in clearing off standing corn stover? 

 I hare thirty-five acres of it. I do not desire to pasture the land, as I 



