440 SOUTHERN FIELD CROPS 



The floor is covered with about five inches of soil, in which 

 the potatoes are bedded and covered with additional soil, 

 just as in the common type of bed. Fire-heated flues are 

 provided underneath the floor. 



The slope of the floor should be about 1 foot in 20. The fur- 

 nace, which is usually 6 feet long by about 2 feet 6 inches in the 

 other dimensions, is made of brick and sunk to such a depth 

 in the ground at the lower end of the bed as to give the necessary 

 slope to the flues. The flues for a bed 12 feet wide usually con- 

 sist of three lines of six-inch tiles and should extend about 30 

 feet from the furnace, at which point they empty their heat and 

 smoke into the large air space under the floor. Over the furnace 

 is a layer of soil about 1 foot deep ; over the flue the depth 

 of this layer gradually decreases. At the end of the hot-bed 

 farthest from the furnace is a wooden flue about 10 feet long 

 to create a draught and to carry off the smoke ; this flue should 

 be provided with a damper to regulate the draft. The effort is 

 to keep the temperature of the soil in which the potatoes are 

 bedded at about 80° to 86° F. 



413. Kind and quantity of potatoes to bed. — A bushel 

 of small potatoes affords a larger nimiber of slips than 

 does a bushel of roots of larger size. This is because the 

 greater number of small potatoes possesses a greater total 

 surface area from which buds grow out. Farmers give 

 preference for bedding to roots of small to mediimi size. 

 It has not been proved that small but well-shaped potatoes 

 cause any decrease in the size of the roots of the next crop. 

 However, in the case of a mechanical mixture of several 

 varieties or strains, the exclusive use, year after year, of 

 the ill-shaped, stringy roots would result in time in a crop 

 consisting chiefly of the inferior strain or variety, having 

 the greatest proportion of undesirable potatoes. So far 



