304 The Principles of Vegetable- Oar dening 



avoid the long, hot summer. It is then difl&cult to keep 

 the potatoes from the spring crop until the next spring, 

 or even until it is time to plant the second crop in 

 August (in the Gulf states). "Seed'' is commonly 

 secured from the North, and only a spring crop is 

 grown for the northern market. 



The potato is inveterately attacked by the potato- 

 bug, flea-beetle, and various blights. Arsenic, as in 

 Paris green, is a specific for the bug, and Bordeaux 

 mixture for the true blight or rot. For the flea -beetle 

 there is no sure remedy, but it may be kept away to 

 a great extent by heavy spraying with Bordeaux mix- 

 ture. Much of the so-called blight is chargeable to this 

 insect. There is no vegetable -gardening crop for which 

 spraying is so imperative as for the potato. For scab, 

 grow the crop on uninfected land and use clean seed; 

 or if the seed is suspected, soak it after cutting in cor- 

 rosive sublimate solution or formalin. 



Nowadays potatoes are planted in drills or continuous fur- 

 rows, which are 3-3X f^^^ apart. Single pieces of tubers are 

 dropped at intervals of 12-18 inches. If the pieces are cut to one 

 strong eye and dropped at above distances, from 8-10 bushels will 

 be required to plant an acre. Many people use too little seed. 

 The yield of potatoes averages about 75 bushels per acre, but 

 with forethought and good tillage and some fertilizer, the yield 

 should run from 200-300 bushels, and occasional yields will much 

 exceed the latter figure. In large -area operations potatoes are 

 planted and harvested by machinery, or by specially made plows. 

 Fig. 82. There are various devices for sorting them, one of which 

 is shown in Fig. 82, i. and another in Fig. 83. 



The size in which pieces of the seed tuber should be cut has 

 been the subject of much controversy, but the question is easy of 

 solution if careful and comparable experiments are made. Arthur 



