Planting

In garden culture the most preferable mode of inserting them is with the dibble, in rows; for the early crops twelve inches apart each way, and for the main ones eighteen inches. The sets should be placed six inches beneath the surface. The potato-dibble is the best instrument that can be employed; the earth being afterwards raked or struck in with the spade, and the soil not trampled upon but planted as sufficient is dug for receiving a row.

The compartment may be laid out level and undivided if the soil is light; but if heavy soil is necessarily employed, it is best disposed in beds six or eight feet wide. If the staple of the soil be good throughout, the alleys may be two feet wide and dug deep, otherwise they must be made broader, and only one spit taken out, the earth removed being employed to raise the beds, which should not be more than four parallel ridges, and the sets inserted along their summits.

Hoeing

As soon as the plants are well to be distinguished, they should lie perfectly freed from weeds; and of the early crops the earth drawn round each plant, so as to form a cup as a shelter from the cold winds, which are their chief enemy at that season. But the main crops should not be earthed up, for earthing up diminishes the crop one fourth. Throughout their growth they should be kept perfectly clear of weeds.

It is very injurious to mow off"the tops of the plants, as is sometimes recommended. The foliage ought to be kept as uninjured as possible, unless, as sometimes occurs on fresh ground, the plants are of gigantic luxuriance, and even then the stems should be only moderately shortened. It is, however, of considerable advantage to remove the fruit-stalks and immature flowers as soon as they appear, unless the stems are very luxuriant. A potato plant continues to form tubers until the flowers appear, after which it is employed in ripening those already formed.

The very earliest crops will be in production in July, or perhaps towards the end of June, and may thence be taken up as wanted until October, at the close of which month, or during November, they may be entirely dug up and stored. In storing, the best mode is to place them in layers, alternately with dry coal-ashes, in a shed. But a still better plan, usually, is to allow them to remain where grown, moulding the rows over six inches deep, and taking them up a week before wanted. The best instrument with which they can be dug up is a three-flat-pronged fork, each row being cleared regularly away.

The tubers should be sorted at the time of taking them up; for, as the largest keep the best, they alone should be stored, whilst the smaller ones are first made use of. The most common mode of preserving them, throughout the winter, is in heaps or clamps sometimes called pyeing. The heaps are laid in pyramidal form on a bed of straw, and enveloped with a covering, six or eight inches thick, of the same material, laid even as in thatching, and the whole inclosed with earth, in a conical form, a foot thick, taken from a trench dug round the heap, and well smooth-ened with the back of the spade.

Potatoes should not be stored until perfectly dry, nor unless free from earth, refuse, and wounded tubers. It is a good practice to keep a hole open on four different sides of the heap, entirely through the earth and straw, for a week or two after the heap is formed; for in proportion to its size it always ferments, and these orifices allow the escape of the vapours and perfect the drying.