THE CULTIVATOR. 
165 
tion immaterial. According to an experiment made with the utmost 
degree of attention, under the direction of the Board of Agricul¬ 
ture, the former, however, appeared to have the advantage of five to 
four in its favor : the produce of an equal weight of sets, and quan¬ 
tity of manure, being—when laid over the dung, 105 lbs. 4 oz. 
Under the dung, 84 “ 3 “ 
Such are the ordinary modes of culture usually adopted through¬ 
out most parts of the United Kingdom ; but a novel plan, which de¬ 
viates in some essential particulars from those generally employed, 
has lately been brought into notice by Mr. Knight, the very intelli¬ 
gent President of the Horticultural Society; and, as the very inte¬ 
resting account which has been published by the society may yet 
be unknown to many of our readers, we here transcribe it, and beg 
earnestly to call it to the serious attention of every farmer who is 
engaged in that branch of husbandry. 
“ The experiments were made upon different varieties of potatoes ; 
but as the results were in all cases nearly the same, I think that 1 
shall most readily cause the practice I recommend to be understood, 
by describing minutely the treatment of a single variety only, which 
I received from the Horticultural Society, under the name of ‘ Lank- 
man’s Pbtato ” a tall sort raised some years since in Flanders. 
“ The soil in which I proposed to plant being very shallow, and 
lying upon a rock, I collected it with a plough into high ridges of 
four feet wide, to give it an artificial depth. A deep furrow was 
then made along the centre and highest part of each ridge; and in 
the bottom of this, whole potatoes, the lightest of which did not 
weigh less than four ounces, were deposited, at only six inches dis¬ 
tance from the centre of one to the centre of another. Manure, in 
the ordinary quantity, was then introduced, and mould was added, 
sufficient to cover the potatoes rather more deeply than is generally 
done. 
“ The stems of potatoes, as of other plants, rise perpendicularly 
under the influence of their unerring guide, gravitation, so long as 
they continue to be concealed beneath the soil; but as soon as they 
rise above it, they are, to a considerable extent, under the control of 
another agent, light. Each inclines in whatever direction it receives 
the greatest quantity of that fluid, and consequently each avoids, and 
appears to shun, the shade of every contiguous plant. The old tu¬ 
bers being large, and, under the mode of culture recommended, ra¬ 
ther deeply buried in the ground, the young plants in the early part 
of the summer never suffer from want of moisture ; and, being abun¬ 
dantly nourished, they soon extend themselves in every direction till 
they meet those of contiguous rows, which they do not overshadow 
on account of the width of the intervals. 
« The stems being abundantly fed, owing to the size of the old tu¬ 
bers, rise from the ground with great strength and luxuriance, sup¬ 
port well their foliage, and a larger breadth of this is thus, I think, 
exposed to the light during the whole season, than under any other 
mode of culture which I have seen ; and, as the plants acquire a 
very large size early in the summer, the tubers, of even very late 
varieties, arrive at a state of perfect maturity early in the autumn. 
“ Having found my crops of potatoes to be in the last three years, 
during which alone I have accurately adopted the mode of culture 
above described, much greater than they had ever previously been, 
as well as of excellent quality, I was led to ascertain the amount in 
weight which an acre of ground, such as I have described—the soil 
of which was naturally poor and shallow—would produce. A colo¬ 
ny of rabbits had, however, in the last year done a good deal of da¬ 
mage, and pheasants had eaten many of the tubers which the rab¬ 
bits had exposed to view ; but the remaining produce per acre ex¬ 
ceeded 539 bushels, of 82 lbs. each; two lbs. being allowed in every 
bushel on account of a very small quantity of earth which adhered to 
them.” 
“The preceding experiments were made with a large and pro¬ 
ductive variety of potato only ; but I am much inclined to think that 
I have raised, and shall raise in the present year, nearly as large a 
produce per acre of a very well-known small early variety—the ‘ ash¬ 
leaved kidney potato.’ Of this I selected in the present spring the 
largest tubers which I could cause to be produced in the last year; 
and I have planted them nearly in contact with each other in the 
rows, and with intervals, on account of the shortness of their stems, 
of only two feet between the rows. The plants at present display 
an unusual degree of strength and vigor of growth, arising from the 
very large size—for that variety—of the planted tubers; and as 
large a breadth of foliage is exposed to the light by the small, as 
could be exposed by a large variety; for I have always found the 
amount of the produce, under any given external circumstance, to 
be regulated by the extent of foliage which was exposed to light; 
and I have uniformly found that to obtain crops of potatoes of great 
weight and excellence, the period of planting should never be later 
than the beginning of March.” 
The produce of this small early variety, in fact, very considerably 
exceeded that of the large one first mentioned—being per acre 665 
bushels of 82 pounds—and both so far exceeded the ordinary crops 
which had been previously raised, except in very rare cases, that 
doubts were entertained of the exactness of Mr. Knight’s conclu¬ 
sions, and experiments, it will be seen, were made in the garden of 
the society in order to obtain further evidence. 
SEED. 
It has been ascertained by repeated trials that every variety of 
the potato, when propagated during a series either by cuttings from 
the root or by the whole tubers, is subject to degenerate: in some, 
the quality remaining good, after the produce in quantity has be¬ 
come defective, whilst with others, it disappears with the vigor of 
the plant. In order to obviate this inconvenience, and to preserve 
those species which are known to be valuable, farmers occasionally 
raise them from the seed contained in the apples which grow upon 
the stalk; for which purpose, a few large ripe apples should be cho¬ 
sen from a healthy plant, and be carefully preserved apart, in some 
dry sand, during the winter. 
The seed is then picked out, and usually sown in rich garden 
ground in the month of April; but it is more expedient to sow it in a 
hot-bed early in March, to expose the shoots gradually to the open 
air, and to plant them out in a bed of rich earth in the middle of 
May. In the month of October, these seedlings will produce tubers, 
the largest of which are to be gathered, and planted out, in the fol¬ 
lowing spring, at a few inches distance from each other. When 
they rise about two inches above ground, they should be covered 
with two or three inches of mould, and managed in the same man¬ 
ner as if grown from the old potato. 
When arriving at maturity, they should be continually and care¬ 
fully examined, to discover those which appear the earliest in com¬ 
ing to perfection ; which will be denoted by the decay of the haulm. 
These should be taken up, and in like manner those of a later growth ; 
but those which show extraordinary vigor should be selected, and 
the produce of each sort being again sown in the ensuing year, a 
correct judgment may be formed of the respective properties of each. 
The process is thus so slow and troublesome, that it takes three 
years to bring any new variety to maturity, and a fourth before the 
real properties of the root can be correctly ascertained. The pro¬ 
duct will also sometimes disappoint the expectations of the grower; 
for although, generally speaking, the major portion of the crop \\ ill 
be found of the same quantity as the original stock, yet it occasion¬ 
ally fails, and new varieties are constantly produced, differing in 
both colour, flavor, size, and the periods of ripening. Thus, it ap¬ 
pears from an experiment lately made in the garden of the London 
Horticultural Society, upon twenty-five seedling varieties reared by 
Mr. Knight, that the estimated produce varied from one to upwards 
of eighteen tons per acre ; all of different qualities. The best pro¬ 
duced from a single tuber twenty-seven large and seven small roots, 
the aggregate weight of which upon an acre of ground it was sup¬ 
posed would equal 17 ton 9| cwt., and being both large, solid, mealy, 
white, well-flavored, and in substance and appearance much resem¬ 
bling the white yam, has been named by the society, after Mr. 
Knight’s country-seat, the “ Downton yam potato.” 
SETS AND TUBERS. 
We have already stated that in the common course of field-husband¬ 
ry, potatoes are invariably planted for a crop either by depositing the 
entire root, or cuttings from it, called “sets.” No objection appears 
indeed to have been commonly entertained against the planting of 
the whole root, or “tuber”—except on the score of economy, though 
probably no other advantage will be thereby gained, for every tuber 
contains many beads, or “eyes ”—from each of which a shoot will 
spring, and by sowing these separately, or in cuttings containing two 
or more together, a saving is made in the quantity; but an extraor¬ 
dinary opinion is entertained regarding the best method of perform¬ 
ing this operation. 
Among numberless experiments which have been made with a 
view to compare the produce of plantations of different sizes of whole 
tubers, and sets from different sizes of cuttings, those of entire pota¬ 
toes reported to the Bath Society were generally stated to be supe- 
