The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-06-25
Sweet Potatoes - InterculturaI Ma
nuring.

have about one acre in sweet potatoes.
cut off oats on this land early in June,
and owing to the dry weather they did
not yield over six or seven bushels per
acre, when I expected at least twenty.
bedded up the land a week after cutting
the oats, and dry as it was, set out DO
tato plants on the freshly bedded land.
l watered each plant well, taking about a
week lin the afternoons) to set out the
acre BY treading the plants firmly in
and watering, only small per cent. of the
plants failed to live. On account of the
dry weather and as the result of waiting
for rain that did not come, allowed nv
plants to stay in the beds until many of
them had vines three feet long. Others
were stunted and sickly looking. With
rain in a reasonable time now | hope to
make a good crop, but probably nothing
like l would have made if 1 could have set
out the plants at the proper time.
wish to ask if it would pay me to bar
off the potatoes, running as close as pos
sible and apply some good commercial
fertilizer in these furrows2 l do not
think the land is rich enough to make
seventy-tive bushels of potatoes per acre,
and l would like to make two or three
times this much of it were possible to do
it. AS the potatoes have managed to live
thus far. I hope they will make up for
lost time when it does rain. R. F. C.
If your land is not sufficiently rich to
make large crop of potatoes, it is quite
possible to supply some fertilizer now
that will greatly increase the crop. It is
more than likely, however, that when the
rain comes you will find that your pota-
toes will grow off very rapidly, especially
if you have stirred the soil shallow
once or twice during the drought. Sweet
potatoes require but small quantity of
nitrogen or ammonia, but they do not
need the mineral elements and if these
are available, your potatoes will need
only good, shallow cultivation to produce
a crop of 200 or 300 bushels. No doubt
you have noticed how crops grow off after
drought when they have been we'll cul-
tivated during the drought.
Any good, complete fertilizer, 200 or 300
pounds applied in the siding burrows,
would most likely increase the yield to
an extent considerably above the cost of
the manure. If our farmers in the inter
Tor had access to such materials, we
should almost always advise the use of
fine bone dust raw bone) and cotton hull
ashes, two parts of the first to one part of
the latter, 200 or 400 pounds of the mix
ture to the acre, but we are well aware
very few farmers are able TO procure
these materials from their local dealers
The great mass of our farmers buy their
fertilizers on a credit, and as a rule they
take whatever fertilizer the dealer keeps
in stock, which usually is the kind he can
make the most money out of without very
much regard to its quality or the good it
will do the farmer.
It is rarely the case that stable manure
Is good thing TO use on sweet potatoes,
and we should never use it only as a last
resort and then only after it had been made
into compost with mineral elements.
Pure bone dust and ashes constitute the
very best fertilizer for sweet potatoes, if
properly applied early in the season.
When applied after the crop has been
started, some good ammoniated super
phosphate with Z or s per cent of potash is
about as good as anything. A superphos-
phate with 2 or 3 per cent. of ammonia is
better than one with more ammonia.
Rank heterogeneous manure is not good for
potatoes. AS a rule, they do best after
some previous crop that has been well
MANFRED. The largest crops of sweet po-
tatoes are usually grown by truckers,
who plant them on land that has borne a
crop of early vegetables-peas or onions,
or other crop that is taken out of the
way by June 1.
We have made fine crops of sweet pota-
toes after crop of Irish potatoes that
mad been highly MANFRED early in the
season.