I 348 
i 
! The potato murrain, and tire immense loss it oeca- 
| sious not only to individuals but to tlio nation, calls 
I upon us to repeat again and again our warning — store 
your potatoes in layers alternately with dry earth, sand, 
or coal-ashes, and in a dry cool building. 
We have received a sufficient number of inquiries, 
relative to our recommendation, to enforce upon us tire 
importance of being still more explicit relative to this 
mode of storing potatoes. 
1. Each layer of potatoes should be only one potato 
deep, and they should not touch each other. 
2. Each layer of earth, sand, or ashes, should be 
sprinkled in between tire tubers, and cover the whole 
about a quarter of an inch deep; and then another layer 
of potatoes should be placed upon it, and so alternately 
until the whole are piled together. 
3. The most easy way of thus storing potatoes, is by 
having boards fixed across one end of the building, so as 
to form a bin or box for them; the front edges of the 
layers being thus kept from slipping down. 
4. A cellar, shed, stable, or any other building in 
which the temperature never rises above 45°, nor falls 
below 33°, is suitable, provided rain is excluded, and the 
floor is not damp. It does not signify whether the floor 
be brick, stone, earth or wood, so that the layers of 
potatoes and their packing stuff be kept dry. 
We have received various communications upon the 
j subject, the contents of which singularly refute thern- 
i selves. One from Essex, after lamenting “ the loss sus¬ 
tained annually,” asks—“ Do you not think pitting 
potatoes is as good as the plan you recommend?” 
“ Pitting!” that is, digging out a spade’s depth of earth, 
putting the potatoes in a conical heap within the hole 
thus made, covering them with straw and then with the 
earth dug out, is one of the very worst modes of storing 
potatoes: they ferment, heat, and consequently acce¬ 
lerate decay, and the result is told in “the loss sustained 
annually.” 
Another gentleman, writing from Taunton, regrets 
“ the bushels ” he has lost each year during “ the last five 
years, and yet he thinks his mode of “ storing in a dry 
cool outhouse, without any other covering, as good as 
that recommended in The Cottage Gardener. ” Now, 
if “ bushels ” have been lost by following this plan, it 
cannot be good ; and as we have stored our’s during the 
yeai's enumerated without any such loss, the plan is not 
so good as that we have adopted and recommended. 
The question, it we como to theory, simply is this— 
Whether the decay of the tuber is caused by a fungus or 
merely by gangrene or putrefaction, are not coolness, 
dryness, and the exclusion of the air effective checks to 
its progress? Now, we will undertake to say, that not 
a practical gardener nor a man of science in all Europe 
will answer in the negative; and if so, then the plan we 
recommend is that most consonant with reason, as in 
practice we have found it most effectual. 
• 
Proceeding with our notes upon the list of artificial 
manures, commenced by us at page 284, we next come 
to Bleaching Powder, or Chloride of Lime. This is com- 
[Sei-tember 5. 
posed of about 03 parts Chlorine —which used to be 
called spirit of salt, being obtained from our common 
table salt—united to 37 parts Lime; and it has been em¬ 
ployed as an assistant to plants in various ways. When 
exposed to the air, as when poured dissolved in water 
over the soil, it parts with a portion of its Chlorine and 
is changed to Muriate of Lime, a salt which absorbs 
moisture from the air very rapidly. This has been 
found alike beneficial to crops on light and clayey soils, 
for it keeps light soils moist during dry weather, and 
it prevents the clods on clayey soils becoming baked 
during drought, so as to be unbreakable by the hoe. 
The plants we have applied it to with most advantage 
are Asparagus, the Cabbage tribe, and Sea-hale, —all 
natives of the sea-shore, where they obtain this salt 
from the waters of the ocean. 
Chloride of Lime, from its property of giving off its 
Chlorine slowly, is largely employed for bleaching pur¬ 
poses ; and the same property adapts it for promoting 
the germination of seeds, the destruction of vermin, and 
the removal of noxious smells. 
Mr. E. Fincham, of Manchester, states that he em¬ 
ployed Chloride of Lime in his garden with good effect, 
for hastening the growth of Turnip-seed. Half of some 
Turnip-seed was steeped for thirty-six hours in a solu¬ 
tion composed of one pound of Chloride of Lime and 
4S pints of water. Both the halves of the seed were 
sown under precisely similar circumstances of soil and 
aspect. The plants from the steeped seed came up 
much sooner, were never attacked by the fly, the pro¬ 
duce was half as much more, and the leaves more 
luxuriant. Ho observes, that in some instances Sir H. 
Davy and others found the application of Chlorine to 
seeds too highly stimulating, which ho attributes to its 
being used uncombined with Lime, and that wherever it 
has failed of doing good this has arisen from the mode 
of application rendering failure certain. 
Great care is required in the employment of Chloride 
of Lime as a stimulant for seeds, for though Mr. Fin¬ 
cham found Turnip seed was benefited by being soaked 
for thirty-six hours in a solution of one pound to 48 pints 
of water, yet in another instance Mustard-seed is said 
to have been destroyed by being soaked for six hours in 
a solution of only one pound to 00 pints of water. Seeds 
of Strelitzia regincc, on the other hand, were uninjured 
by being soaked in it for twenty-four hours. 
For destroying vermin, Chloride of Lime has also been 
employed very effectively. Mr. Fincham employed a 
solution of the same strength as for his Turnip-seed to 
destroy the insects (ho does not say whether caterpillars 
or green-flies) which attacked bis rose, gooseberry, and 
currant trees; watering over them by means of a rose 
water-pot, “by which they were effectually cleared from 
the vermin.” 
A gardener writing in the Gardeners Chronicle, in 
1843, says—“ I was very much annoyed by the worms 
getting into the flower-pots, of which I have between 
five and six hundred, and not a place where I can set 
them in the summer season, except round the edges of 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
