41—1846.] 
THE GARDENERS^ 
CHRONI 
CLE. 675 
THE READING GIANT ASPARAGUS, —| 
Strong Plants, two years old, 2s. 6d. per 100, with liberal 
discount to market gardeners and nurserymen taking them in. 
quantity. Parties who prefer planting in the spring can have 
any number reserved if ordered now. 
Messrs, Surron and Sons have great confidence in recom- 
mending the above as the very best variety of Asparagus in 
cultivation, 
STRONG SEA-KALE, for forcing, 5s. per 100. 
MYATT'S VICTORIA RHUBARB, large roots, 15s, per doz. 
N. New Early Peas, and other garden seeds for early 
sowing are now ready. 
Reading Nursery, Reading, Berks, Oct. 10. 
WHITETHORN, 
FE C. BALL having a Stoek of from two to three 
* millions of the above, begs to offer them to the notice of 
Railway Contractors and Planters. Samples and prices will 
ation.—Taunton Nurseries, Oct. 10, 1846, 
M S W GERANIUMS.—Now sending out 
FORGET ME NOT, REMEMBRANCE, FIREFLY, 
SIR WALTER RALEIGH GILBERT, and the PERI. The 
whole set for 5l. 
*a* Usual. allowance io the Trade. 
Descriptions ean be obtained. Great attention paid to 
careful packing.— WinzrAM E. RENDLE and Co. 
Plymouth, Oct; 10. 
The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1846, 
Tus time has passed for attempting to ward off 
the Poraro Disrasr of 1846, if it ever was pos- 
sible to do so, which we do not believe ; and it now 
behoves us to set about gathering together our ex- 
perience with a view to the future. What should we 
do? is the inquiry that meets us at every turn. 
Plant ‘on hot dry land, says one ; dress your land 
with lime, cries a second ; lime and salt are better, 
writes a third; use plenty of potash or soda, urges 
another. Raise seedlings, shun guano, get seaweed, 
fetch sets from Peru, plant on slopes facing the sun, 
plant on slopes facing the north, buy Professor 
Hoox-rnr-SrwPLE's “steep ;” and twenty more 
panaceas are offered to the poor public, which stands 
bewildered by the kindness of its multitude of 
friends. And well it may, for it possesses imperfect 
means of judging of probabilities in a case like this, 
and has no power of distinguishing between right 
and wrong. For ourselves we feel it to be as pre- 
sumptuous in ourselves as in others to hazard any 
recommendations where all is confessedly most un- 
certain ; nevertheless, we cannot shun the respon- 
sibility which attaches to our position. We there- 
fore proceed to offer such suggestions as a careful 
investigation of facts from the beginning of the 
Potato disasters leads us to believe deserving of 
being followed ; how far they merit confidence 
must be determined by those who have had experi- 
ence in the soundness of the opinions we have ex- 
pressed on former occasions. 
Our first advice then is what it wasin the spring 
of the present year—not to plant Potatoes at all 
(see p. 116). It is impossible for any man to fore- 
tell whether the disease will continue or disappear ; 
or whether it will increase in severity or be miti- 
gated. This year it is worse in some places, less 
considerable in others; it has visited districts pre- 
viously exempt, and it has quitted fields which were 
formerly ravaged. Upon the whole it has proved 
much less destructive in some places, especially on 
the Continent, and hence it may be inferred by the 
sanguine that it is about to quit us. But the 
experience of the United States, where the third 
year was worse than the first, leads to a different 
conclusion ; and it would be dangerous for any one 
much acquainted with the past to venture upon a pro- 
hecy as to the future. So great, indeed, is the 
uncertainty, that we should even feel it our duty to 
urge the necessity of prohibiting the further culti- 
vation of the Potato for the present, by the Irish 
and Highland peasantry, if there was any chance 
of their having any to plant; and we strongly re- 
commend that poor people should be generally dis- 
couraged from continuing to grow it. It would be 
difficult to find a more useful subject for cottager's 
prizes than “the best cropped allotment of which 
Potatoes form no part ;” at all events it would be 
right to withdraw all prizes for Potatoes. 
We are by no means insensible to the value of 
Potatoes to a. poor man—if he can get them; but 
any vegetable that can be grown with certainty will 
be better under existing circumstances. Nor will 
the absence of Potatoes be felt so severely as timid 
persons think. Men formerly did well enough with- 
out them, and so they will again. And surely it is 
wiser to consider that as lost which there is no cer- 
tainty of preserving, than to indulge in fond hopes 
which reality may blight. The wisdom of our an- 
cestors did not lose sight of this, 
hen remedies are past, the griefs are ended, 
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. 
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone 
Is the next way to draw new mischief on, 
What cannot be preserv'd when fortune takes, 
Patience her injury a mockery makes. 
The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief ; 
dramatists, and how applicable it is to our present 
case we need not say. For ourselves we class 
onds, They may recover—some day—but no- 
body knows when. 
` So useful a plant is not, however, io be lost with- 
out a struggle, and therefore it is certain that its 
cultivation will, nay should, go on with those who 
can afford the risks to which it is clearly liable. In 
the absence of any satisfactory explanation of the 
cause of tlie disease all treatment must of necessity | 
| 
be to some extent empirical. There are, however, 
i et By 
a few tolerably well-ascertained facts upon which | 
we may now rely, and these form the foundation of n 
our present recommendations, | 
It is within the knowledge of every one that | 
from the beginning the early varieties of Potato | 
have suffered least, and the latest most. It js also 
a general, though not universal, fact that the Pota- | 
toes next the surface of the ground have suffered 
more than those which were buried more deeply ; 
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief, 
Such was the reasoning of the greatest of our 
that is to say the oldest and ripest, which are al- | 
ways the deepest, were better able to resist disease 
than the youngest, which are always nearest the | 
surface. The first of these facts is not confined to | 
England ; the same observation has been made in | 
France in various places (Comptes Rendus, 27 July 
and 94 Aug., 1846); the second, which has been 
occasionally insisted upon by our correspondents, 
has been this year ascertained by ourselves, and is 
Nw NN 
NN 
exemplified in a striking manner by a very curious 
specimen, for which we are indebted to WILLIAM 
Hanwoop, Esq., of Ridware, near Lichfield, and of 
which the above is a representation, In this 
singular example a cluster of five Potatoes has been 
formed successively from the point A, where the 
runner of the set is broken off; the first four are 
perfectly sound; the fifth and last is wholly dis- 
eased. The inference seems to be that—ripe Po- 
tatoes suffer little ; unripe ones much. 
If that be so it becomes of the first importance to 
secure early ripeness, either by planting very early 
kinds, or by autumn planting, or by both. Each 
variety of the Potato requires a certain number of 
days in which to grow and mature its tubers ; 
number affected, no doubt, by seasons, but tolerably 
uniform under equal circumstances. e earlier, 
then, a Potato is planted, the earlier it will ripen ; 
that is to say a Potato which can begin its growth 
on the Ist of March will ripen a fortnight sooner 
than the same Potato planted on the 14th of March. 
This fact, however, does not indicate any advan- 
tage in autumn planting over early spring planting, 
and Mr. Niven, in his pamphlet, even regards the 
latter as the better of the two, because— 
“ About the time mentioned, the middle of Febru- 
ary, the buds naturally begin to protrude, when it 
is easy to detect every unhealthy tuber, and lay them 
aside. In autumn planting this cannot so nicely be 
one, In early spring planting, the soil and the 
manure are loose and fresh, and their temperatures 
rising. In autumn planting, the temperature of air, 
Soil, and manure is falling, the tuber thus rests inert 
until the time above mentioned, when not only is the 
soil about it hardened and soddened, but the-best parts 
of the manure washed away.” 
If there were nothing else to gain than the longest 
and earliest periods of growth this argument would 
have weight ;-but- the question is not so simple. 
Another, and perhaps the most important consi- 
deration of all, remains, 
We do not know what produces the Potato dis- 
ease ; wehave no apparent means of coming at the 
immediate cause of it ; but it seems to be in some 
way connected with an enfeebled condition of the 
plant itself, which makes it susceptible of influences 
that might not otherwise have affected it. Or if 
this should be denied it must at least be con- 
v 
Potatoes with Chilian, Peruvian, and Mexican | withstand disease. Now, it requires no argumentto 
b 
ceded, uno; peneral prineiples, that the more 
beaithy any living thing the better it will be able to 
show that the nearera plant or animalis to the state 
of nature—the less artificial its life—the more healthy 
it will be, and the reverse. Let us apply this 
reasoning to the Potato; it is a plant which at a 
stated period sinks to rest, after having formed its 
tubers; in. its natural condition these tubers re- 
main in the soil, damp and cold, excluded from the 
air, accumulating excitability during their winter, 
|and ready to start into instant life at the allotted 
return ofthe season of growth. Its artificial life is 
diametrically opposed to this ; when the tubers are 
formed they are dug up, exposed to air, and sun, 
and warmth; they are thrown into pits, covered 
with straw, kept dry and warm, and allowed to heat, 
as they inevitably must, more or less, in a.common 
clamp ; at the return of the time for their growth 
they push forth shoots, which literally * gnaw their 
own entrails ;” and when the clamps are opened it 
becomes necessary to destroy all the first growth by 
rubbing off the shoots ; in oiher words the vigorous 
first-born are destroyed to make room for the seaond 
sons, against all our laws of primogeniture. 
Autumn planting prevents all this, and at once re- 
stores the Potato to its natural condition without 
interfering with our own artificial wants. 
The objections to autumn-planting are—first, that 
the land cannot be gotready ; but we may as well 
object to any other crop. It may put aman a little 
out of his way, butthat is 
not ourconcern. Ifpeo- 
ple have neither energy 
nor capital they should 
turn to some other em- 
ployment than raising 
food, which, above all 
things, demands a large 
supply of both. Another 
is that the Potatoes will 
be frozen in the winter ; 
but it is now ascertained 
that Potatoesdonotsuffer 
from frost if lying in the 
ground; and if they did 
it is plain that deep 
planting would be their 
security, 
Then again it is repre- 
sented that a drawback to 
the autumn planting of 
Potatoes insome stiff soils 
is that the land is seldom dry enough in the autumn 
to be moved. by spade or plough, and that when 
worked in this. state it becomes consolidated and 
impervious to the roots of plants. Our own land is 
among the heaviest in England, and we find no 
such drawback ; but supposing it to exist, then such 
a plan as our correspondent “ Sigma” proposes, may 
at least be adopted. He proposes to leave every 
third row of Potatoes in the ground all the winter 
for seed (covering them: with soil- high enough to 
keep out the: frost), and to take advantage. of the 
fizst time in spring when the ground is dry to plant 
other erops. 
The last alarm is lest the Potatoes should get 
through thé ground so early in spring as to be cut 
back by frost. Such a thing may happen, no doubt ; 
and if it does, what then? i 
Although in our judgment autumn planting is the 
best under the circumstances, yet we by no means 
pretend that it is a security against the Potato dis- 
ease. On the contrary, we have already stated 
(see p. 615) that Mr. Surrnrnp's autumn-planted 
Potatoes in the. Calf of Man have this year been 
blighted, But they escaped last year in the midst 
of destruction, and the injury they have this year 
sustained, although blighted, is, we will venture to 
say, inconsiderable. The experiments of Mr. 
Grey, of Dilston, with autumn planting are satis- 
factory, as we have learned from a letter received 
since this article was in type.* 
Our own autumn-planted Potatoes were almost 
* In the beginning of September the disease ap- 
peared upon the haulm in patches, which were blighted, 
but not universally. It soon, however, looked as if it 
were extending over the whole, when the whole was 
mown down and cleared away. Disease was found in 
a few tubers, those at the top and next to the stalk 
being most affected, while others at a' distance below, 
and attached by the long small shoots which is often 
found of the length of 3 or 4 inches, remained sound. 
Contrary to expectation, the autumn planting was as 
much affected as the others, which it is said is not 
generally the case. The sound Potatoes of the autumn 
planting are remarkably good ; more mealy and fine in 
quality than the others, while the quantity maintaing 
nearly the same proportion to the spring planting as in 
the experiments of former years, being about one-third 
more, If those which are now sound and good should 
