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CULTIVATION OF POTATOES. 
CULTIVATION OF POTATOES. 
Probably no crop has caused so much attention and talk, for the last ten years, as the potato 
crop. Being adapted to a cold moist climate, and yielding a large amount of nutriment, it 
has been widely cultivated, and depended upon as food by large communities. When a crop 
of this description is cut off and fails generally, so as to create want, it becomes a loss which 
can not but be felt by the nations at large. 
The potato is easily cultivated, and requires, probably, less care than most crops ; yet it well 
repays a careful and thorough cultivation. The true mode of cultivating this crop is to prepare 
the ground by deep ploughing ; it gives opportunity for the extension of the fibres upon which 
the tubers grow. Fermented manures are better than the long unfermented, and upon a mellow 
soil, wood ashes is more valuable than other fertilizers, as it furnishes the supply of potash 
which the young tuber requires. Rich or nitrogenous manures, and the saline compounds 
generally, increase the growth ©f vines, without promoting the development of the tuber. The 
tubers have multiplied greatly in variety ; and it is a matter worthy of notice, that a diversity 
of excellences are borne by these varieties. The ripening of potatoes has not received the at¬ 
tention it deserves. If it has attained a common size it is often regarded as fit for the table. 
But it is with the potato as with apples and other fruit, there is a state of ripeness and 
maturity required before it is eaten, if we would secure and possess its better qualities. The 
Merino, for instance, is a spring potato ; others are winter, and others still are autumnal. The 
Early Shaw is one which attains its goodness in the autumn, and retains its excellence till the 
succeeding spring; it is not, however a good producer, and its tubers are rather small. 
The great drawback to the cultivation of the potato is its liability to rot. For nearly ten 
years this tendency to be diseased has been on the increase. It has varied, however, in its 
intensity, but more or less disease has been annually observed. It has assumed, at some points, 
great energy, so that whole fields have been so thoroughly infected that the sound potatoes 
were not numerous enough to pay for digging. 
The investigation of the nature and cause of the malady which has destroyed the potato has 
employed as many minds as the cholera itself; and, like the cholera, the cause is still unknown 
and mysterious, and probably will continue to be so—that is, the real true cause. Some have 
imagined that it is an insect, which poisons the sap ; some supposed that it was to be found in 
the constitution of the soil; others, in a change which had been brought about by the long 
cultivation of the tuber, without renewing the plant from the seed ; that in reality its vital 
powers were on the wane, and that its vigor was about becoming extinct. All these views, 
however, have fewer advocates now than formerly. Those who thought the cause existed in some 
defect in the soil, proposed to remedy it by the addition of various elements; and those who 
thought the potato was worn out through long cultivation renewed their tubers from the seed, 
and even sent to the land of its nativity for the vigorous plant, upon the mountains of Chili and 
Peru; but these failed. The character of the tuber, however, is important, for some varieties 
have escaped, in a measure, when others have been very generally diseased. My own views 
