The Cultivation Of The Potato

The mode of propagating this root is very simple, the common method being to set the potato itself. This applies more particularly to the early kidney varieties, the later sorts and the round potatoes having usually a greater abundance of eyes or buds. In cutting potatoes for sets they should be divided through the crown, as the shoots which rise up from the bottom are strong and vigorous, and produce more stem, which takes from the nourishment of the root by depriving it of the sap. One or two eyes in each set is sufficient. It is desirable to let the wounds of cut potatoes remain for a few days to harden and heal over before planting them. Small potatoes are sometimes preferred for setting, the crop producing usually about the same quantity of potatoes in either case.

The early, or forced, potatoes are raised in hot beds or grown in pots in manure or tan beds (set about Christmas or January); but for our usual outdoor early crops they are planted in the open ground about the middle of February. They are planted in rows two feet apart and about fifteen inches distant from each other. The potato should always be planted with the crown uppermost (which will make the difference of a fortnight in its appearance above ground), and placed four or five inches in the earth, leaving the soil loosely round them, at the same time covering them well over. When the potatoes are three or four inches high, the spaces between should be well hoed to remove weeds and loosen the soil round them, which promotes the growth; when the stems have further advanced to about eight inches high, the earth should be hoed up round them to exclude the light from the roots (which turns them green); a second hoeing is sometimes required to prevent the stems from falling.

The late crop of potatoes may be planted in March and April. The ground is generally prepared for them previously, and holes made with a setting stick and the soil trod up over them, whilst the sets may be dropped in by women or boys; the same directions for weeding and hoeing being pursued in the field as well as the garden culture.

Towards the end of July the early sorts will begin to ripen, and should be taken up as soon as the stalks have withered down. In October and November the general late crops will have arrived at maturity, and should be taken up as soon as possible before severe frost sets in, as they arc turned watery by it and rendered unfit to eat. Potatoes should always be dug up with a three-tyned fork, being the proper instrument for that purpose, made blunt and rounded at the ends.

Let potatoes, as far as possible, be dug in dry and sunny weather, as they come up very clean and are ready to house at once; keep them in a dry place, and in severe weather cover them well over with a good thickness of straw. They should from time to time be looked over, and such as have any tendency to decay ought to be taken out, as they would soon infect the rest.

Old decayed manure is the best that can be used in the culture of the potato; coal ashes and burnt soil, with a little lime, are beneficial on heavy land. On the coast, sea-weed, in addition to other manures (or separately) is dug in. The richer the land is the better the crop; fresh land may do without the application of manure at all. Potatoes are considered rather an exhausting crop to the soil, and constant planting on the same piece of ground requires the aid of artificial means to assist the growth of the root.

The varieties of the potato are very numerous: they consist of two kinds, kidney potatoes and round potatoes. These sorts differ in earliness, lateness, form, size, colour and quality. Some of these degenerate and others improve when removed from one district to another. The new plants are obtained from seed. Three years are required to elapse before the new root is fully developed in size, and its quality and merits can be properly discerned. Few of the early kinds of potatoes produce blossom, and to obtain seed from them the plant should be deprived of its tubers, and the runners kept above ground by not earthing up. The same sap gives existence to both root and apple, so that by depriving the plant of one it produces the other. In addition to flowers and roots, some potatoes produce stem tubers, which are small bulbs appearing with the leaves. These, when set, will yield potatoes; but very few varieties do this. It is seldom that the root changes when produced from the eye; but Mr. Phillips informs us, in his "Companion for the Kitchen Garden,"' that Mr. Bate, when he went with the first settlers to Van Diemens Land, took with him about half a bushel of potatoes for seed which were all of one kind; and to his great surprise when they were dug up, he had five distinct varieties - the White Champion, the Red Round, the Kidney, a small round potato, and a variety commonly called the Miller's Thumb. A sample of each was afterwards sent into a warmer climate, where, on being planted, they all degenerated into one, the original variety".

Many interesting experiments have been made in the cultivation of the potato; the following and most recent is worthy of insertion, being perhaps also the most novel, at the same time highly profitable and simple in its application.

Some few years ago a friend of mine purchased some cuttings from a wash-leather mill (or wash-leather waste, as it is called), consisting as it does of the trimmings and dust produced in the making of the leathers. In a field previously well trenched but not manured, he dibbled the potatoes in the ground, placing in each hole a piece of the leather with the potato, with a small portion of the dust, filling with soil in the ordinary way. The potato chosen for this experiment was the common "Early Shaw;" and the result at first sight seems almost incredible. Many of the potatoes weighed one and two pounds each, the largest one noticed being within an ounce of three pounds. Forty potatoes could easily be found from a few roots to fill a bushel measure, the largest number of tubers on one stalk being seventy-two, and, despite their immense size, none were discovered hollow in the middle, nor on being cooked was there any bullet-like appearance in the centre, so often found in large potatoes.