TUBER CROPS.
POTATOES.
A heavy yield of potatoes may be simply a matter of moisture and
frequent tillage. The potato likes Scotland[5] and Nova Scotia because
it thrives best in deep, cool, moist soil, finely pulverized and
containing much potash. Knowing the conditions under which any crop
grows well, is equivalent to growing a big crop, to the careful farmer,
so if you want some potatoes, you may as well get the most possible.
The average farmer raises 75 bushels to the acre, but it pays to be
above the average. You ought to be ashamed to grow less than 200 or
300 bushels even taking 75 as a starting point, for, when you consider
that by the exercise of brains and labor, all the way from 600 to 1300
bushels per acre have been produced, you may well decide to prove what
you can do. You have a chance to beat the record.
Potatoes should be planted deep and early. If they are planted too near
the surface they will ripen before they are fully grown or maybe get
sunburned and unfit for eating. Choose your best potatoes for seed,
if you plant from your own crop; or buy only the best varieties, if
you must buy. But it is well to remember that there is always danger
in potato seed raised elsewhere than on your own patch where you can
watch conditions. Don’t use a potato for seed if it has a black thread
running through it; a roughened or irregular circle on the skin, or a
hollow center. Burn all such; else you will have diseased crops and
give yourself no end of trouble and expense. Plant the seeds at least
four inches deep and plow them in. The surface should be harrowed two
or three times before the plants come up, and the crop should have
light, surface tillings five to eight other times during the season.
Potatoes are planted in “drills” or continuous furrows, 27 to 42 inches
apart, at intervals of 9 to 18 inches, and it requires from 8 to 18
bushels of potatoes to plant an acre. Most farmers plant too sparingly.
There has been much book discussion as to the size of seed cuttings,
but the most economical size is one weighing about three ounces or
the size of a large hen’s egg, with at least one good eye. The potato
cutting is food; therefore the larger the cutting the more food, and
the more food the better early growth, and the better the early growth
the better the yield. Bailey claims that a piece containing too many
eyes means too many sprouts contending for that food and each weakening
the other in the struggle for its own existence.
For early potatoes, the only ones that can pay in a small plot,
remember five different things: (1) good site and an early soil; (2)
land prepared either by special plowing the fall before, or by growing
late-tilled crops, that the soil may be in good tilth; (3) free use
of concentrated, quick-acting fertilizers; (4) early varieties of
potatoes; (5) sprouting the sets, so that the short, thick, firm,
colored shoots are secured. To secure these, light and a moderate
degree of warmth, 40°-50°, is needed. Nothing pays better than
sprouting.
No crop needs spraying more. Unless it is frequently sprayed, it is
almost certain to be attacked by the potato bug, the flea-beetle and
blight, and the yield cut down. Dry Paris green puffed on while the
leaves are damp with dew, ends the troubles of the bug, and Bordeaux
mixture can be sprayed for blight. No specific has yet been discovered
for the flea-beetle, but it does far less damage where Bordeaux mixture
is freely used. I have heard of letting the chickens loose on the
flea-beetles.
SWEET POTATOES.
The common or Irish potato does badly in the South, except as an early
crop, because the climate is too warm, but where the common potato
suffers, the sweet potato thrives. It requires a warm, sunny climate,
a long season, and warm, loose soil, with plenty of moisture during
growing time, and less during ripening. It is very tender and cannot
stand frost. It is grown extensively as far north as the sandy lands of
New Jersey.
The soil must be rich, loose, and well drained and liberally fertilized
with well-rotted manure. Wood ashes will help the growth of the tuber
most satisfactorily.
Only one variety of sweet potato, the Spanish, is cut and planted like
the common potato. All other varieties are grown from “slips,” or, as
they are sometimes called, “draws.” A whole potato is laid on a hot-bed
and covered with a couple of inches of loose soil or leaf-mould. Very
soon it begins to sprout and when the shoots are from three to five
inches high, they are broken off next the tuber, and planted. Their
roots have already begun to form and these are the “slips.” The same
potato or tuber, will give another set of slips if allowed to remain in
the ground. In the extreme south no hot-bed is necessary to start the
sprouting.
Another method of obtaining slips is from cuttings from the ends of
the vines. Take cuttings from 10 to 12 inches long, from the earliest
planted or the most vigorous vines. Having removed all the leaves
except those at the very tip, plant the cutting lying down with only
an inch or two of the tip showing. The rows should be about three feet
apart and the slips in the row 18 inches apart. The average yield is
from 200 to 400 bushels per acre.
Sweet potatoes suffer from several fungous diseases which are discussed
in New Jersey Experiment Station bulletins on Sweet Potato Culture.
Leaf blight may be checked by the use of Bordeaux mixture, but rotation
is the cure for tuber crop diseases.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Ireland is not really the land of the “praties”; the average yield
of Great Britain is higher than of Ireland.