February 23. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
307 
but upon making application for some seed of the Pea, 
Beck's Gem, you spoke so highly of, in your Journal of the 
2nd instant, I was informed that they had none except for 
their regular customers. Will you kindly inform your 
readers of this fact, and thereby spare many a fruitless 
journey. “ John Denny, Stoke Newington.” 
POTATO CULTURE—SUGGESTIONS. 
The present high price of this universal favourite, 
notwithstanding the great deterioration in quality, as 
compared with the Potatoes of a score years since, 
proves that the public still cling to it with as much 
tenacity as ever; although such immense losses have 
accrued to cultivators as would have driven any other 
root out of cultivation. We may, therefore, expect an 
enormous breadth under culture again this year; and I 
take it for granted, that practical hints from observant 
and experienced cultivators will he well received by our 
numerous readers. 
A few years since, soon after the disease broke out, 
the press teemed with nostrums, recipes, and advice 
—the latter certainly of the most dogmatical character; 
and the public, fairly swamped with mere opinions, at 
last turned from the subject with disgust. The great 
misfortune was, that the bulk of all this gratuitous 
advice was given by persons whose chief qualification 
for the matter was an extreme partiality for this root, 
especially when accompanied by good old English roast 
beef. As our country farmers say, there was too much 
of the “ fire-side ploughingand culture of this kind 
is not always of the most profitable. I take it for 
granted, that after all the visionary speculations that 
have been offered as the ground-work for future opera¬ 
tions, the best way to deal with the question is to take 
warning from past facts, and to leave hypothesis to the 
mere experimenter. 
One great fact, and that, on the face of the question, 
is this: that luxuriance of growth, so far from being 
an alleviator, is a promoter of the disease. This is so 
well established, that I will venture to affirm ninety 
out of a hundred of really experienced and practical 
men will readily assent to it. The next point established 
is, tliat late growth offers no chance of amelioration, 
but directly the reverse. Here, again, I have no fear of 
being left in a minority as to the opinion. These, then, 
are, I think, the two chief features of the question on 
which, for the present, to base our practice; other 
collateral points there are to which I will just advert, 
but they hold a decidedly subordinate position. Such 
being taken for granted, we may as well see for a 
moment how the two admitted evils are produced. 
To say that manurial matters produce luxuriance is 
a mere truism—every schoolboy knows that; but, does 
nothing else contribute to it ? Here is the rub! A 
man, holding opinions that rich manures prove pre¬ 
judicial, may plant a plot in an old kitchen-garden, 
and fancy, that because he has added no fresh manure 
he cannot have erred in that respect; but this is most 
fallacious, and thousands annually thus mistake their 
course. I have known many a plot in a kitchen-garden 
much richer after a scouring crop, than the manured 
land of the farmer; at least, if not in manures, in the 
remains of former applications, or in that dark material 
termed humus, and which we gardeners find highly 
contributary to rampant growth. 
Setting aside the question of manures for a moment— 
Is there nothing iD cultural operations having a ten- 
! dency to produce the undesirable condition of a gross 
j plant?—Yes; deep digging ; and this is unluckily 
favourable to late as well as rampant growths. Those 
| who have long known me as a staunch advocate for 
! deep digging, trenching, and such-like high cultural 
operations, may think, in an off-hand way, that I “ blow i 
hot and cold.”—Not so, however. When deep digging, j 
manuring, &c., are found to be inimical to the welfare j 
of any given orop, I, for one, am content to throw them 
overboard, although things of immense importance in 
themselves; in order to be better able to buffet the 
waves and avoid shoals and rocks. But I will quote a 
case which occurred with me last year. Having a 
desire to grow a liberal quantity of the Ash-leaved 
Kidney , specially for seed, an annual practice with 
me, 1 selected one of the poorest plots in the kitchen- 
garden ; the previous crop had been the Red Beet, for 
which ground had been trenched; in doing so, about 
three inches of subsoil had been brought up, a usual 
practice with me. The ground was unmanured for the 
Beet previous, and, of course, unmanured for the Kidney; 
and, I will now add, undug ! 
The ground was marked out in beds of about three to 
four feet—what our Cheshire farmers call “ butts”—a 
corruption, doubtless, of “ bouts.” The Kidneys were 
set on the solid ground, exceedingly thick, in order to 
make them small and genteel; for we old Kidney 
Potato growers know full well that too high culture 
forces the Kidney to “run out,” that is to say, to lose the 
handsome form for which it is in part so much esteemed, 
and to become dumpy and irregular. 
The Kidneys, planted whole, of course, were about 
six inches square apart, every little fellow selected for 
shape, and set on end ; they then bad a slight dressing 
of old manure, delivered by hand from a basket, 
strewed over them; and next a coating of pulverised 
soil, about two inches in thickness. Nothing more was 
done until they were just bursting through the soil, 
with a crop of young weeds, when another two inches 
of pulverised soil was spread over them, thus “ killing 
two birds, &c.” This latter is the ordinary “ butt 
culture ” practice in Cheshire. 
I have now to add, that the crop was enormous for the 
space occupied, I think nearly double that of some 
treated in higher style, and, as I expected, the majority 
of them were adopted for seed to plant whole, for it is 
nonsense to plant Kidneys whole nearly as big as a 
flounder, with the idea of having a superior crop; this 
is, indeed, a waste. 
It may now be naturally expected that I should show 
how this deep digging may prove prejudicial to Potatoes 
in their present position ; but in doing so, I must beg 
to qualify such remarks by observing, that I by no 
means affirm that deep digging is to be avoided in all 
cases. I am simply speaking of old tilled or dug soils, 
rich in the remains of former manures. Deep digging, 
of course, encourages deep rooting; deep roots are often 
at work when shallow ones are idle; and the system of 
the plant is, of course, thereby kept distended with 
invigorating fluids, which, as a matter of course, not 
only render the plant more gross, but, from the mere 
annual up to the huge Oak, through the various inter¬ 
mediate grades, sustains a lively circulation for a longer 
and later period in defiance of temporary droughts and 
other vicissitudes to which plants with mere surface 
fibres were ever liable. 
Everybody knows, who has paid close attention to the 
character of the disease under varying conditions, that 
it assumes at least two distinct phases after a certain 
period; and here I would not defer the question to 
those possessing small suburban gardens, but to those 
whose lot is cast amongst thousands of broad acres, and 
whose locality is known as a Potato district. In such 
quarters, I have seen, repeatedly, extensive fields adjoin¬ 
ing each other, and of precisely a similar staple of soil, 
the one covered with a moist and rotten blackness, the 
other dried up to mere sticks. And how is this? Simply ! 
because the one field produced a gross, or highly cul- ; 
tivated plant, the other a lean one, through the mere j 
