

THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Growing Melons. — ; Perhaps it would interest some of you readers to know of a method of culti- 

 vating melons which I have practiced very suecesirfiilly for the past three or four years. For some 

 reason they do not ordinarily ripen well in tliis region when planted, as on Long; Island or in New 

 Jersey, in the open air. I have first dug holes two and a half feet deep and three or four in diameter ; 

 into tliis, the hxst of April, I have thrown stable manure, such as is used for hot-beds, three or four 

 wheel-barrowfuls. On the top of this I place a box, shaped like the box of a hot-bed, but only large 

 enough to require four panes of 8 by 10 glass, and in the box I place six or eight inches of eand, with 

 ashes and charcoal, and hoe the dirt around the box in the form of a neat mound. After a few days 

 I plant my melon seeds, enough to give me a selection of the best plants, leaving but three in a hill 

 when fully grown. In the sides of the box may be sown tomato seed, as in a hot-bed. The result 

 has been, that my melons and tomatoes have I'ipened two or three weeks earlierjtlian they would 

 otherwise have done, and in great profusion. F. — Homer, N. Y. 



Sweet Potatoes. — I have been raising sweet potatoes for the last seven or eight years, and for 

 the most of tliat time have experienced much difficulty and loss in wintering the seed for the next 

 year's ci'op; but I now feel much gratified, in being able to inform you and the public, that all the 

 extra labor which I believe to be. generally thought necessary to preserve the seed over winter, is 

 entirely unnecessary and worse than useless, of which I have been growing suspicious for several 

 years past. Last fall I adopted the following mode, with complete success and entire satisfaction : 



I dug my potatoes during a spell of nice Indian Summer, about the first week in October. They 

 were handled carefully, taking care to bruise them or fracture the skin as little as possible, (which I 

 think as necessary as in the management of keeping apples,) and spread on a clean sod and exposed 

 to the sun for from a week to ten days. I then carefully gathered twenty -six bushels of them in 

 a basket, carried theni up stairs, laid them away in barrels and boxes, and covered them up with old 

 carpets, bags, or anything to keep the air from them. Wlien the winter began to set in cold, I col- 

 lected tliem around the stove-pipe and chimney,, and covered them all over in a body witli boards 

 and other covering extending down to the floor, thus husbanding all the heat that might arise through 

 the course of the day from the pipe and through the flooi-, which were considerable, as they were 

 located over a cook stove in which there was generally fire from five o'clock in the morning until 

 nine or ten at night. During some of those coldest days and nights, (of which some were extremely 

 cold — from 12 to L5 deg. below zero,) the. heat was so great on those boxes and barrels nearest the 

 pipe, say within six inches, that I could scarcely bear to hold my hand on them at tlsat point. There 

 were two barrels, furthest fi-om the fire, that were touched with the frost a little, which I overhauled 

 in February. I believe I can safely s.ay the whole loss on the twenty-six bushels, including those 

 tliat were frost-bitten and a few small ones dried up by tlie excessive heat, did not exceed fiv% pecks. 

 I now liave thirteen bushels of them in hot-beds, and offer the plants at fifty cents per hundred, or 

 four dollars per thousand. 



I discover that by putting them in large quantities together when fresh dug, they will fsrment, or 

 go through a sweating process, which is very injurious, in which I believe the milk is more or less 

 converted into water, and the saccharine principle more or less destroyed, thereby unfitting them 

 either for the table or to keep. It is the opinion of many that they are fit to eat only while fresh — 

 tliat they get to be out of season, &.C. ; but this is a mistake. On the other hand, the longer they are 

 kept, the sweeter and more delicately flavored they become, as I argue, from the greater concentra- 

 tion of the gaccharine matter as the water evaporates. 



There is another false opinion more or less in circulation, in regard to eastern and western grown 

 potatoes, which is, that the eastern grown are sweeter and better than the western grown tubers. 

 This idea was strongly advanced to me one year ago last fall, in Buffalo. On the contrary, I believe 

 what little difference there may be, if any, is in favor of the western grown; in defence of which 

 position, let me advance a short Statement, which is this: The Irish potato, as it is called, which is 

 raised in this country, is more delicately flavored tlian those of the eastern States. This ojiinion I 

 believe is universally admitted here. I think the cause is in the soil — tliis being light and loamy, 

 and that heavy clay and gravel; — the one being in a state of nature — rich, fertile, and fat; the 

 other, barren, sterile, and poor in comparison. This I have tried, in the article of beets, in my 

 garden, which in the natural state is a stiff yellow clay. At the first improvement of it, I hauled 

 upon it enough of wettish prairie soil (I can not call it muck) to make two or three beds. The fol- 

 lowing season was quite a dry one, and the beets which we grew in the clay soil were so bitter we 

 •^ h could scarcelv cat them, while those of the same seed and variety which grew in the prairie soil, i r 



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