KEEPING AND STORING. 175 



ature is uniform and about 50°. Growers for market 

 usually build squash houses or rooms and heat them. Great 

 care should be taken not to bruise any squashes which are 

 to be stored. Squashes procured from the market have 

 usually been too roughly handled to be reliable for storing. 

 Sweet potatoes. — In the North. — Dig the potatoes on a 

 sunny day, and allow them to dry thoroughly in the field. 

 Sort out the poor ones and handle the remainder carefully. 

 Never allow them to become chilled. Then pack them 

 in barrels in layers, in dry sand, and store in a warm cellar. 

 They are somethnes stored in finely broken charcoal, in 

 charcoal-dust, wheat-chaff, and similar substances. 



Sometimes they are kept in small and open crates, with- 

 out packing-material, the crates being stacked so as to 

 allow thorough ventilation. The Hayman or Southern 

 Queen keeps well in this way. 



A warm attic is often a good place in which to store 

 sweet potatoes. A tight room over a kitchen is particularly 

 good when it is so arranged that the heat from the kitchen 

 can be utilized in warming it. 



In the South (Berckmans). — Digging the tubers should 

 be delayed until the vines have been sufficiently touched by 

 frost to check vegetation. Allow the potatoes to dry off in 

 the field, which will take but a few hours. Then sort all 

 those of eating size to be banked separately from the smaller 

 ones. The banks are prepared as follows : Make a circular 

 bed 6 feet in diameter, in a sheltered corner of the garden, 

 throwing up the earth about a foot high. Cover this with 

 straw and bank up the tubers in shape of a cone, using from 

 10 to 20 bushels to each bank. A triangular pipe made of 

 narrow planks to act as a ventilator should be placed in the 

 middle of the cone. Cover the tubers with straw 6 to 10 

 inches thick and bank the latter with earth, first using only 

 a small quantity, but increasing the thickness a week or ten 

 days afterwards, A board should be placed upon the top 

 of the ventilating pipe to prevent water from reaching the 

 tubers. Several banks are usually made in a row, and a 



