The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1683 
INotes from a Maryland Garden 
Today is October 20, and the average 
date for killing frost here, but so far wc 
have had no frost at all, and the Dahlias, 
('annas and Chrysanthemums are in their 
glory. It looks as though the storage 
houses will not hold the sweet potato 
crop ; that a very large portion will have 
to be shipped, no matter what the price 
may be. Of course they can be stored in 
the old-fashioned way in hills covered 
heavily with pine leaves and earth. I 
have kept them in that way sound till 
June, but in a very severe Winter the 
frost may reach them, and in a dry place 
a pit would be better. But with individ¬ 
ual growers with 20,000 to 00,000 baskets, 
the handling of the crop is a serious mat¬ 
ter. 
In the Virginia counties just south of 
us the early Irish potato crop is the most 
profitable one, while here the sweet po¬ 
tato crop is of greater importance, and 
our sandy soil is peculiarly suited to their 
production. Riding through the country 
and noting the proportion of the crop 
which ha; been dug, and the much larger 
portion still in the ground, it looks as 
though there will be difficulty in getting 
them all dug, with the present scarcity of 
labor. 
My Nancy Hall sweet potatoes are 
stored in the cellar, and we are eating the 
dry Jerseys till the Nancy Ilalls get “fat,” 
about Christmas. These yam varieties im¬ 
prove in keeping, and by Christmas are in 
the jelly-like state. A baked Nancy Hall 
when in fine condition is something en¬ 
tirely apart from the dry Jerseys. The 
Virginia people seldom eat the potatoes 
they grow for the Northern markets. They 
grow a separate batch of the panish or 
Nancy Hall or some other of the yam 
sorts for home eating. There is a sweet 
potato grown to some extent in the South 
called the “Nigger Choker” which would 
delight the Northern housekeeper. It has 
pure white flesh and purplish red skin. 
Baked, it is as dry as a roast, chestnut, 
and would stand the boiling that the 
Northern folks treat sweet potatoes to. 
and which no yam will submit to. The 
season has been so favorable to the growth 
of sweet potatoes that there is too large a 
percentage of overgrown potatoes. These 
do not bring the best price here, as they 
are hard to bake through. 
StraAvberries are still plentiful on our 
market, but the dry weather has made the 
fruit small. They sell for 25c a box. and 
the little things are dear at that price. It 
is refreshing to look hack at old times to¬ 
day. I received from a friend two bound 
volumes of the old American Farmer, pub¬ 
lished in Baltimore by the late Samuel 
Sands, the man who first put the Star 
Spangled Banner in type from Key's man¬ 
uscript. I was looking over the market 
reports in the volume for 1S23. Butter 
was ISc a pound, whisky from country 
wagons 32 to 35c a gallon, chickens $2 a 
dozen. Wheat was $1.50 a bushel, a strong 
price compared with other things. 
There was a great discussion of the 
cotton rot. as they called it, caused by a 
little insect that punctured the bolls. -It 
looks as though they had then an invasion 
of the boll weevil that has come again. 
One curious statement was about cotton 
cultivation on the bottom land along the 
Missouri River northwest of St. Louis, 
where one man claimed to have grown 
1,000 lbs\ of “clean white cotton” on 10% 
acres of land. No cotton has been grown 
in that section for a great many years. 
But I did grow cotton in window boxes 
in the office of the Secretary of State in 
the old Capitol Building in Jefferson City 
in the Winter of 1S5S-9, where I worked 
during the session of the Legislature that 
Winter after the railroad surveys in 
which I had been engaged had ceased till 
Spring. In my grandfather’s time cotton 
was grown on the Eastern Shore of Mary¬ 
land, and I have grown it successfully in 
experiments here. I have now stored 
away an old counterpane, woven in two- 
ply figures, half cotton and half wool, 
both grown in Maryland and woven in 
1794. 
I am still earthing up the leeks, and 
they are still growing fast. The object 
of first setting in an open furrow and 
then working the soil to them and hilling 
up is to get the longest white shanks for 
boiling in Winter. They often keep grow¬ 
ing till Christmas, and this warm Full 
they are outdoing their record. 
W. F. MASSEY. 
rip* pHB 
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