08 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



should all be done by the time they get one quarter 

 of their growth — is of va^t importance in securing 

 a well-ripened and heavy yield, and should by no 

 means be omitted. We must not fail here, for these 

 are important crops, and midsummer is the pinch 

 with them as regards their value,— especially corn, 

 which the frost hardly gives time to ripen, when 

 the planting season is delayed as of late years. 

 Kiagara Co., N. Y. ''• 



CULTIVATION OF THE SWEET POTATO. 



Editoes Genesee Faemer :— In the April num- 

 ber of your valuable journal, you state that yoii 

 " have received frequent inquiries as to the feasi- 

 bility of the sweet potato being cultivated in your 

 vicinity." To this inquiry I will give the answer, 

 positively and affirmatively, that, by pursumg a 

 proper course, they can be raised in the greatest 

 perfection in any part of your State, and, in my 

 opinion, even in a much higher degree of north 

 latitude. To this seemingly dogmatical opinion I 

 have arrived as the result of an experience of my 

 own; and with a wish to contribute something 

 that may add to the general comfort of man, I here 

 give it, as follows : 



At the time I commenced house-keeping, my 

 place of residence was Asheville, Buncomb county, 

 jSf. 0.— a high, cold country, west of the Blue ridge, 

 and 4,500 feet above the level of the Atlantic. The 

 first successful attempt to raise the sweet potato in 

 this county was made by Dr. Swain, a gentleman 

 from Massachusetts. This he did by means of hot- 

 beds ; and the mode is now generally understood 

 and practiced. The 1st of June, the Dr. informed 

 me that, ha\ing made his hot-bed unnecessarily 

 large, and after taking all the plants from it that 

 his grounds required, there was a large portion of 

 his bed from which he had taken no plants, and if 

 I wished to plant, I could there get thousands. On 

 examining the bed, I found it covered with a dense 

 mass of vmes, of all lengths, from fifteen inches 

 down. I considered them too large for transplant- 

 ing, and should have given the subject up had I not 

 had my hills made— round hills. A bright idea 

 flashed upon my mind, and I concluded to let the 

 idea develop into an experiment. It was this : I 

 tad all my hills truncated, taking them off about 

 half way between the apex and the ground. I then 

 procured a hand barrow and a broad shovel, and 

 after digging away the earth from one side of the 

 hot-bed°uutil I got completely below the stratum 

 of soil in which the potatoes were imbedded, and 

 sufficiently deep to be below all the roots and 

 fibres, I ran the blade of the shovel in horizontally 

 ;and took up the whole mass — vines, potatoes, roots, 

 and all, — in doing which I was compelled to divide 

 the mass into convenient sections, so as to get it 

 upon the barrow. This I transferred with great 

 cai-e, so as to separate as little soil from the young 

 roots as possible, and, having plenty of material, I 

 divided the bed into sections to correspond as near 

 :as possible with the size of the truncated hills, and 

 thus restored to them tops, containing the earth of 

 the hot-bed, which was about ten inches thick, and 

 in this the parent potato, the vine, and young roots. 

 I then scraped the earth up round the hill where 

 the two sections joined, gave them a copious water- 

 ing, and, to use an expression of a young man who 

 lived with me at the time, they seemed never to 



know that they had been removed from the doctor's 

 garden. By the last of August they were fully 

 grown, and larger potatoes, or of a better quality, I 

 have never seen in eitlier South Carolina or Georgia. 

 They were of the ridged Spanish variety. _ The soil 

 they grew in was sandy loam, enlivened with wood 

 ashes. 



The secret of my success is this. Plants taken 

 from a hot-bed, remain stationary for fifteen days 

 after being set out, and after that advance slowly ; 

 whereas, my plants grew all the time, and kept a 

 week ahead of Dr. Swain's, up to the time of ma- 

 turity. SILAS m'dowell. 



Franl-lin, Jf. C, May 20, 1858. 



STIRIIING THE SOIL AND TUENING MANUEK 



I AM surprised that Mr. Johnston should have 

 so misunderstood my remarks on the subject above 

 named, as he appears to have done by his com- 

 ments. When I said that farmers generally plow 

 too much, or stir the soil too much, I had reference 

 to the extent of surface gone over, not to any ex- 

 cess of cultivation in preparing land for a crop. — 

 According to the last census, the farmers of New- 

 York plow, harrow, plant and hoe an average of 

 about five acres to raise one hundred bushels of 

 corn ; while the writer believes that it would bo 

 better economy to grow a hundred bushels of corn 

 on an average of two acres, and thus save three- 

 fifths of all the land planted in corn, in a great 

 State, for other agricultural purposes. As most 

 farmers know that a heap of manure grows smaller 

 by being frequently turned over, especially when 

 exposed to rains and sunshine, as is the vegetable 

 mold in a corn-field, I referred to such treatment of 

 manure to illustrate the certain loss of organic 

 matter in a soil by cultivating five acres to obtain 

 crops which ought to grow on two acres. My idea 

 is, that farmers not only lose much honest, hard 

 work, by going over too much land with the im- 

 plements of tillage, to obtain the crops harvested, 

 but that the practice tends to consume and waste 

 all the elements of fertility in the soil. Ground 

 that has but few and feeble plants, whose rootlets 

 fill not a tenth part of the stirred earth, loses the 

 largest per cent, of the constituents of crops, as 

 compared with the harvest. A gallon of milk a 

 day will raise a fine pig ; but dilute this gallon of 

 milk in a hogshead of water, and whether you give 

 a gallon of this milk-and water, or force through 

 the pig the whole of the dilution, he must be a lean 

 hog at last, and most of your milk will have been 

 wasted. Fvely upon it, thoughtful reader, most of 

 us render the food of plants too diluted in the earth 

 we stir with the plow; and at the same time I 

 would caution you that it is quite as easy to run 

 into the opposite extreme, as do a few farmers in 

 England, who over-feed alike their live stock and 

 growing crops. ^' '^^^• 



To Pbotect Ctjcttjibees and Melons feom tmb 

 Steiped Bttg.— Take a small piece of paper, put it 

 on the ground in the centre of your hills, and lay a 

 small stone on each corner to keep it fast ; then put 

 on it two or three pieces of gum camphor as large 

 as a pea. Renew the camphor when it is gone, and 

 I will ensure the plants against injury from th« 

 bug. J. T. Sergeant.— »Sani BrooJc, If. J. 



