The potato is most profitably grown in a warm, dry, sandy, or gravelly
loam, well filled with decayed vegetable matters. The famous potato
lands of Lake County, Ohio, from which such vast quantities of potatoes
are shipped yearly, are yellow sand. This potato district is confined to
ridges running parallel with Lake Erie, which, according to geological
indications, have each at different periods defined its boundaries. This
sand owes much of its potato-growing qualities to the sedimentary
deposit of the lake and to manural properties furnished by the
decomposition of the shells of water-snails, shell-fish, etc., that
inhabited the waters.
New lands, or lands recently denuded of the forest, if sufficiently dry,
produce tubers of the most excellent quality. Grown on dry, new land,
the potato always cooks dry and mealy, and possesses an agreeable flavor
and aroma, not to be attained in older soils. In no argillaceous soil
can the potato be grown to perfection as regards quality. Large crops
on such soil may be obtained in favorable seasons, but the tubers are
invariably coarse-fleshed and ill-flavored. To produce roots of the best
quality, the ground must be dry, deep, and porous; and it should be
remembered that, to obtain very large crops, it is almost impossible to
get too much humus in the soil. Humus is usually added to arable land
either by plowing under green crops, such as clover, buckwheat, peas,
etc., or by drawing and working in muck obtained from swamps and low
places.
The muck should be drawn to the field in fall or winter, and exposed in
small heaps to the action of frost. In the following spring, sufficient
lime should be mixed with it to neutralize the acid, (which is found in
nearly all muck,) and the whole be spread evenly and worked into the
surface with harrow or cultivator.
Leaves from the woods, buckwheat straw, bean, pea, and hop vines, etc.,
plowed under long enough before planting to allow them time to rot, are
very beneficial. Sea-weed, when bountifully applied, and turned under
early in the fall, has no superior as a manure for the potato. No stable
or barn-yard manure should be applied to this crop. If such nitrogenous
manure must be used on the soil, it is better to apply it to some other
crop, to be followed the succeeding year by potatoes. The use of stable
manure predisposes the tubers to rot; detracts very much from the
desired flavor; besides, generally not more than one half as many
bushels can be grown per acre as can be obtained by using manures of a
different nature. Market gardeners, many of whom from necessity plant on
the same ground year after year, often use fine old stable manure with
profit. Usually they plant only the earlier varieties, crowd them with
all possible speed, dig early, and sell large and little before they
have time to rot, thus clearing the ground for later-growing vegetables.
Thus grown, potatoes are of inferior quality, and the yield is not
always satisfactory. Flavor, however, is seldom thought of by the hungry
denizens of our cities, in their eagerness to get a taste of something
fresh.
Market gardeners will find great benefit from the use of wood-ashes,
lime, and the phosphates. Sprinkle superphosphate in the hill at the
rate of two hundred pounds per acre; mix it slightly in the soil with an
iron rake or potato-hook, then plant the seed. Just before the last
hoeing, sprinkle on and around the hill a large handful of wood-ashes,
or an equal quantity of lime slacked in brine as strong as salt will
make it.
But for the generality of farmers, those who grow only their own supply,
or those who produce largely for market, no other method of preparing
the soil is so good, so easy, and so cheap as the following; it requires
time, but pays a big interest: Seed down the ground to clover with wheat
or oats. As soon as the grain is off, sow one hundred and fifty pounds
of plaster (gypsum) per acre, and keep off all stock. The next spring,
when the clover has made a growth of two inches, sow the same quantity
of plaster again. About the tenth of July, harrow down the clover,
driving the same direction and on the same sized lands you wish to plow;
then plow the clover neatly under about seven inches deep. Harrow down
the same way it was plowed, and immediately sow and harrow in two
bushels of buckwheat per acre. When it has grown two inches, sow plaster
as before; and when the buckwheat has grown as large as it will, harrow
down and plow under about five inches deep. This, when cross-plowed in
the spring sufficiently deep to bring up the clover-sod, is potato
ground _first-class in all respects_.
It is hardly supposable that this mode of preparation of soil would meet
with favor among all farmers. There is a parsimonious class of
cultivators who would consider it a downright loss of time, seed, and
labor; but any one who will take the trouble to investigate, will find
that these same parsimonious men never produced four hundred bushels of
potatoes per acre; and that the few bushels of small tubers that they do
dig from an acre, are produced at considerable loss. "Men do not gather
grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles."
To make potato-growing profitable in these times of high prices of land
and labor, it is absolutely necessary that the soil be in every way
fitted to meet any and all demands of the crop.
It is said that in the State of Maine, previous to the appearance of the
potato disease, and before the soil had become exhausted by continued
cropping, potatoes yielded an average of four hundred bushels per acre.
Now, every observer is aware that the present average yield of the same
vegetable is much less than half what it was formerly. This great
deterioration in yield can not be attributed to "running out" of
varieties; for varieties are extant which have not yet passed their
prime. It can not be wholly due to disease; for disease does not occur
in every season and in every place. True, we have more insects than
formerly, but they can not be responsible for all the great falling off.
It is traceable mainly to poverty of the soil in certain ingredients
imperatively needed by the crop for its best development, and to the
pernicious effect of enriching with nitrogenous manures. Any one who
will plant on suitably dry soil, enriched only with forest-leaves,
sea-weeds, or by plowing under green crops until the whole soil to a
proper depth is completely filled with vegetable matter, will find to
his satisfaction that the potato can yet be grown in all its pristine
vigor and productiveness.
To realize from potato-growing the greatest possible profits, (and
profits are what we are all after,) the following conditions must be
strictly adhered to: First, the ground chosen _must be dry_, either
naturally or made so by thorough drainage; a gently sloping, deep, sandy
or gravelly loam is preferable. Second, the land should be liberally
enriched with humus by some of the means mentioned, if it is not already
present in the soil in sufficient quantities, and the soil should be
deeply and thoroughly plowed, rendering it light, porous, and
pulverulent, that the air and moisture may easily penetrate to any
desirable depth of it; and a proper quantity of either wood-ashes or
lime, or both, mixed with common salt, should be harrowed into the
surface before planting, or be applied on top of the hills immediately
after planting. And, finally, the cultivation and after-care should be
_prompt_, and given as soon as needed. Nothing is more conducive to
failure, after the crop is properly planted, than failure in promptness
in the cultivation and care required.