6o8 



AMONG THE FLOWERS AND \EGETABLES. 



grown it every year since, and must say that we are just 

 as much pleased with it now as we were in the first year 

 of its introduction. All things considered, we believe it 

 is yet the best early garden potato we have. The reason 

 that it is not more generally grown and liked, probably, 

 is that it cannot be depended upon in field-culture. It 

 requires rich, rather moist soil, such as we find in good 

 average gardens. It is admirably adapted for strong 

 loams, even if quite clayey, and on such soils, when 

 stimulated by heavy manuring, yields as heavily 

 as any other potato. It can stand and rather likes 

 heavy seeding. A little patch which we grew for 

 seed purposes this year, whole potatoes being used 



unfit for human food as most immature things are. The 

 Early Ohio gives to the market gardener who has the 

 right kind of soil for it a chance to offer to his customers 

 new potatoes which he can guarantee to be ripe and to 

 cook mealy, in advance of his competitor who grows Rose 

 or Hebron potatoes, and who cannot give this guarantee. 



The question is. Will it pay to use rich ground and so 

 much manure in potato-growing ? With proper manage- 

 ment the crop should be early enough to sell for at least 

 Si a bushel, and large enough to yield not less 

 than 300 bushels an acre. Here you have $300 

 as gross returns from one acre. What other crop 

 can you raise that will bring in a like amount 

 at smaller expense for labor and manure ? 

 The tendency of heavy applications of barn- 



for seed, and these placed much farther apart than we 

 would put them for the largest yield per acre, harvested 

 at the rate of almost 400 bushels an acre. 



The Early Ohio is several days, perhaps a week or 

 more, earlier than any good potato now generally grown. 

 It is also of good quality for a potato of its season, cook- 

 ing dry and mealy even before it is fully ripe. Market 

 gardeners ordinarily grow the Early Rose or Hebron, 

 and in order to be in the market in time to secure best 

 prices dig their potatoes when half grown and still soggy. 

 These early-dug potatoes are notoriously poor, and as 



yard manure to fa- 

 vor the increase of 

 scab is one of the 

 difficulties the pota- 

 rower has to 

 face. It will be well 

 to reject all seed ex- 

 cept that which is 

 perfectly clean, or to 

 try to find means for 

 disinfecting seed not 

 quite free from scab, 

 or suspected to have 

 been in contact with 

 scabby tubers. 



Spraying for the 

 Grape -ROT. — The 

 efficacy of spraying 

 with the Bordeaux- 

 mixture and other 

 fungicides is being 

 again called in ques- 

 tion. This season seems to De a genuine fungus year, 

 and perhaps we may discover that a great deal of the 

 exemption from disease in some of the years gone by 

 was not all due to treatment of the vines with fungi- 

 cides, but to a large extent to atmospheric conditions 

 less favorable to the development of fungous growth. 

 On the whole, we can not say that we are satisfied with 

 our present formulas for fungicides, nor with the results 

 obtained by spraying our disease-inflicted crops, nor 

 with the rate of progress that is being recorded in this 

 whole matter. Persistent spraying with the Bordeaux- 



