178 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1901. 
potato is asa farm crop. The farmer not only gets a crop of potatoes under- 
ground, but he also gets a large crop of vines from the surface. ‘The ends of 
the vines and the leaves are also a very good table vegetable when boiled, and 
they are often used instead of cabbage or spinach when vegetables are scarce. 
When you get to know more about the nature of plants you will discover that 
the sweet potato is not a potato at all, because it belongs to a totally different 
order of plants. Now, let us see how a crop of reat potatoes is produced. 
You probably have seen farmers planting potatoes, and know that they get 
two crops of them ina year. If you examine the potatoes he is planting, you 
will see that at one time of the year he plants small potatoes whole, and at 
another time he cuts large potatoes in pieces. Now, look at these two 
potatoes. What difference do you see in them? You see little white shoots 
on one and none on the other. Right. Now, those little shoots, when 
the potato is put underground, will not be long before they appear aboye 
ground with dark-green leaves, and from them long rootlets spring out 
and spread in all directions, sucking up plant food, as I explained to you in the 
Hirst Lesson. On the other potato you said you saw no shoots. There are 
only the little hollows from which the shoots will spring by and by. ‘These 
little hollows are called the “eyes” of the potato. Look at it again. How 
many eyes can you count? Nine, are there not? And in what part of the 
potato are there the greatest number of eyes? You see they are most 
numerous at one end, whilst at the other end there are none at all. If we were 
to plant this large potato with its nine shoots, they would probably all come 
above the ground together, and we should have a plant with nine stems. The 
farmer does not want so many, because he knows that a plant with one or two 
stems will give him as good a yield as the bushy one, or perhaps a much better 
yield; so he cuts the large potato into pieces called “setts,” taking care to 
leave two eyes on each sett. We will cut this potato into setts. You see, 1 
have got six setts each, with one or two eyes, with the shoots or ‘“leaf-buds,” as 
we ought to call them, springing from them. Each of the setts will produce a 
strong, healthy plant if they are planted in good, fertile soil and receive 
sufficient water and are kept clear of weeds. These six setts will produce more 
than six times as much as if the potato were planted whole. The young plants 
are kept moist by the piece planted until it is exhausted, and the roots are able 
to gather food from the soil. The potatoes are called “tubers” from a Latin 
word meaning “a swelling.” They are not the root of the plant, as some people 
suppose, but are produced atthe ends of some rootless underground branches. If 
you pullup a potato plant with young tubers on it, you can plainly see that the 
true roots are quite distinct from the tubers. The potatoes used for planting are 
called ** seed potatoes,” but in reality they are not the seed at all. The seed of 
the potato is contained in the small round green fruit which often appears on the 
‘“haulms,’ as the stalks are called, after these have flowered. But as potatoes are 
always used to produce other potatoes, they have obtained the name of seed. 
How to cultivate potatoes will form the subject of a future lesson. Both the 
common or Irish potato and the sweet potato were brought to Europe from 
America over 400 years ago by British and Spanish sailors. 
The tuber of the sweet potato, unlike that of the Irish potato, is the 
swelled root of the plant, which is a climbing plant of the same nature as the 
conyolvulus, and bears very pretty white or rosy flowers which resemble those 
of the convolvulus. 
You have now been shown three different ways of producing a crop. 
First by seeds, secondly by cuttings, and thirdly by tubers. ‘There are other 
means of producing plants, but they do not belong to ordinary farm work, so 
I shall say nothing about those methods now. Ina former lesson I told you, 
in our talk about soils, that some soils are very flat and wet, and that methods 
have to be adopted to get rid of the too abundant moisture. Some lands are 
so situated that although there is a stiff subsoil, the rainwater runs off in time 
into rivers, creeks, and gullies ; but even then the farmer has to do a great deal 
to assist nature. So he performs a work called draining, and thus, to rid land 
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