Book VI. THE POTATO. g47 



These he cultivated in his fields, deeming them preferable to all other sorts as admitting of later plant- 

 ing and earlier removal ; and this practice he justly considered as highly favourable to the succeeding crop 

 of wheat. 



5306. In choosing a sort or sorts of potatoes from the numerous varieties which are to be found every 

 where, perhaps the best way is, for the selector to procure samples and taste them, and to fix on what 

 best pleases his palate. The shaw is one of the best early potatoes for general field culture; and the 

 kidney and bread-fruit are good sorts to come in in succession. The Lancashire pink is also an excellent 

 potato ; and we have never in any part of the British Isles tasted a potato equal in mealiness and flavour to 

 this variety, as cultivated round Prescot, near Liverpool. The red apple and tartan are of undoubted pre- 

 ference as late or long keeping potatoes. The yam is decidedly the best potato for stock, and will produce 

 from twelve to fifteen tons per acre. 



5307. The soil in which the potato thrives best is a light loam, neither too dry nor too 

 moist, but if rich, it is so mucli the better. They may, however, be grown well on many 

 other sorts of lands, especially those of the mossy, moory, and similar kinds, where they 

 are free from stagnant moisture, and have had their parts well broken down by culture, 

 and a reasonable portion of manure added. The best-flavoured table potatoes are almost 

 always produced from a newly broken up pasture ground not manured ; or from any new 

 soil, as the site of a grubbed up copse or hedge, or the site of old buildings or roads. 

 Repeated on the same soil they very generally lose their flavour. The yam produces the 

 largest crops on a loamy and rather strong soil, though it will grow well on any that is 

 deeply ploughed and well manured. 



5308. In preparing the soil for potatoes, it is of much importance to free it as completely as possible from 

 root weeds, which cannot be so well extirpated afterwards, as in the culture of turnips, and some other 

 drilled crops, both because the horse-hoe must be excluded altogether at a time when vegetation is still 

 vigorous, and because at no period of their growth is it safe to work so near the plants, especially after 

 they have made some progress in growth. It is the earlier time of planting, and of finishing the after- 

 culture, that renders potatoes a very indifferent substitute for fallow, and in this respect in no degree com- 

 parable to turnips. For this reason, as well as on account of the great quantity of manure required, their 

 small value at a distance from large towns, and the great expense of transporting so bulky a commodity, 

 the culture of potatoes is by no means extensive in the best managed districts. Unless inthe immediate 

 vicinity of such towns, or in very populous manufacturing counties, potatoes do not constitute a regular 

 rotation crop, though they are raised almost every where to the extent required for the consumption of 

 the farmer and his servants, and, in some cases, for occasionally feeding horses and cattle, particularly late 

 in spring. The first ploughing is given soon after harvest, and a second, and commonly a third, early in 

 spring; the land is then laid up into ridgelets, from twenty-seven to thirty inches broad, as for turnips, 

 and manured in the same manner. 



5309. The best mamne J or the potato appears to be littery farmyard dung ; and the best mode of apply- 

 ing it, immediately under the potato sets. Any manure, however, may be applied, and no plant will bear 

 a larger dose of it, or thrive in coarser or less prepared manure : even dry straw, rushes, or spray of trees, 

 may be made use of with success. It is alleged, however, that recent horse manure, salt, and soapers' 

 ashes, have a tendency to give potatoes a rank taste, and to render them scabby. 



5310. The best climate for the potato is one rather moist than dry, and temperate or 

 cool, rather than hot. Hence the excellence of *he Irish potatoes, which grow in a dry, 

 loamy, calcareous soil, and moist and temperate climate : and hence, also, the inferiority 

 of the potatoes of France, Spain, and Italy, and even Germany. In short, the potato 

 is grown nowhere in the world to the same degree of perfection as in Ireland and Lanca- 

 shire, and not even in the south of England so well as in Scotland, and the north and 

 western counties : all which is, in our opinion, clearly attributable to the climate. 



5311. The season for planting potatoes in the fields, depends much on the soil and 

 climate. Where these are very dry, as they always ought to be for an early crop, the sets 

 are usually put in the ground in March or earlier ; but for a full crop of potatoes, April 

 is the best time for planting. Potatoes, indeed, are often planted in the end of May, 

 and sometimes even in June ; but the crops, although often as abundant, are neither so 

 mellow nor mature as when the sets are planted in April, or in the first eight or ten 

 days of May. For seed, however, they are preferable. 



5312. In preparing the sets of potatoes, some cultivators recommend large sets, others 

 small potatoes entire, and some large potatoes entire. Others, on the ground of experi- 

 ence, are equally strenuous in support of small cuttings, sprouts, shoots, or even only the 

 eyes or buds. With all these different sorts of sets, good crops are stated to have been 

 raised, though tolerable-sized cuttings of pretty large potatoes, with two or three good eyes 

 or buds in each, are probably to be preferred. 



5313. Independently of the increased expense of the seed, it is never a good practice to make use of whole 

 potatoes as sets. The best cultivators in Ireland and Scotland invariably cut the largest and best potatoes 

 into sets, rejecting, in the case of kidney potatoes, the root or mealy end as having no bud, and the top or 

 watery end as having too many. No objection is made to two or even three buds on each set, though one 

 is considered suflicient. A very slight exercise of common sense might have saved the advocates for 

 shoots, scooped out eyes, &c., their experiments and arguments ; it being evident, as Brown has observed, 

 to every one with any practical knowledge of the nature of vegetables, that the strength of the stem at 

 the outset depends in direct proportion upon the vigour and power of the set. The set, therefore, ought 

 to be large, rarely smaller than the fourth part of the potato ; and if the potato is of small size, one half of 

 it may be profitably used: at all events, rather err in giving over-large sets, than in making them too 

 small ; because by the first error no great loss can be sustained ; whereas, by the other, a feeble and late 

 crop may be the consequence. It is ascertained beyond doubt in Lancashire, Cheshire, and other counties 

 m the north and west of England, that sets taken from the top or watery end of the potato, planted at the 

 same time with sets taken at the root or mealy end, will ripen their tubers a fortnight sooner. It is ascer- 

 tained also, and accounted for on the same general principle, that the plants raised from unripe tubers 

 are both vigorous and more early than such as are raised from tubers perfectly ripe. (See Gard.Mng.\o\.'\\.) 



5314. Sets should always be cut some days before planting, that the wounds may dry up ; but no harm 

 will result from performing this operation several weeks or months beforehand, provided the sets are not 

 exposed too much to the drought so as to deprive them of their natural moisture. 



