The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-05-20
THE FARM AND THE GARDEN.
MATTERS OF INTEREST TO HOUSE
WIFE AND AGRICULTURALIsT.

Growing Onions-A New Spraying
Liquid.
The sweet potato Is usually a field crop
with Southern farmers, as it is rarely ad-
mtted into the precincts of the garden,
but sometimes it is a good plan to treat
it as a garden vegetable.
On good garden soil it is not very
difficult matter to make from 300 to 500
bushels of sweet potatoes on an acre This
is a crop that intensive culture pays On.
Five dollars to $40 worth of suitable po-
tato manure, with two to four extra cUl-
tivatings, beyond what the field crop us
ually receives. will make a difference Of
tentimes of several hundred bushels on
one acre.
How to manage an acre to make it pro-
duce several hundred bushels may be
stated as follows: Take fair, gray sandy
soil and lay it off at three feet, making
the burrows broad and shallow. Some
weeks before planting time comes make
a mixture as follows: Five hundred
pounds of pure bone dust, 500 pounds of
oak or hickory ashes that have been
rotted, but not leached, one hundred
pounds of common salt. Mix these ingre-
dents together thoroughly. and spread the
compound over the burrows, and then list
upon it. Do this sometime In March or
early April. When the potato plants are
nearly ready for setting cut relslow the
land, splitting open the bed with d scooter
and bedding back on this furrow with
four burrows. Set the plants fifteen inches
apart on the bed. 1t will take little
over m,0O0 plants to set an acre at this
distance: to-wit: three feet by fifteen
inches.
There is no reason in the world why
these hills should not ave age at the
lowest calculation one quart of potatuts
to the hill, AMI this would give a total
product of $40 bushels per acre. Good
land, properly fortified with mineral fer
tilizer and cultivated as it Should be can
be made to double the yield--whicn is to
say two quarts to the hill.
We have no doubt whatever that pre-
MUM of $1,000 offered for the largest
yield of sweet pota toes one acre
would produce yield of 1000 bushels FER
acre If twenty-five or more pc sons COM
peted for premium.
Sweet potatoes can be grown in the
same land for many years. needing only a
fair application Of the mineral elements
from tine to time There is no crop Gull
tiv3ted that 50 thoroughly shades the
soil from July 70 October as does TIC
sweet potato. This dense shading of the
soil, as is well known, is productive of
the formation of nitrate (nitrogen ana
after the first year or two the poorest
soil will be fond to POSSESS an ample
supply of nitrogen for the further pro-
dLction Cf sweet potato crops. any fur
tAer application of fertilizer hcins con-
iintd entirely to the mineral elements
phi sphoric acid, potash and lime
There are great many more wa
rletles OF sweet potatoes planted in the
South than there should be. Many grow
ers are satisfied with some very inferior
KINDS that have crept in gradually during
the past Inventive or thirty years, and
grievously adulterated once splendid va
rieties that were so generally cultivated
forty or fifty years ago. We have no doubt
II is the case elsewhere as it is here
that 1t is a very difficult matter to find
any large quantity of the old Georgia
yam with the pink skin Spanish
Ihese two varieties are unsurpassed by
any other as to quality, though perhars
not quite so productive as some others.
The potato most extensively grown in
TINS section now is the kind generally
known as the pumpkin yam,
which, though inferior for table use to
the two just mentioned is much supe-
rior to several other kinds that are large
ly planted in Georgia. A very inferior
potato, known as the "Hayti yam or
San Domingo yam, is very extensively
grown in Georgia. 1t is a good kind to
STOW lOf StOcks out IOF-tabie use 1t is
very inferior, inferior even to the white
| yam pink skim that is euphoniously des-
ignated as the niger killer"
| As we have remarked before there is
no better work for our Southern expert
ment stations to do than that of reduc-
| ing to order the now very much confused
nomenclature of our sweet potatoes and
| separating the poor from the better and
more desirable varieties. Our several
/ Southern stations cooperating together
can, in the course of eight or ten years,
weed out all inferior varieties and classi-
| fy all such are worthy of culture,
perhaps introducing to cultivation some
new and desirable kinds from the seeds
| The sweet potato is no doubt subject
| to the same deterioration that the Irish
potato is from long continued cultivation
| from cuttings or sprouts and new varie-
| ties started from the seed is something
to be sought after. Surely our stations
| in the Southern states will not neglect
this very important matter The station
! that fully accomplishes this work will
cover itself with glory and make full
| compensation for the money expended
upon 1t. AS 1t is now, some varieties are
much more productive than others. Some
are much better keepers. In these re-
spects such as are inferior should be dis
| carded as soon as possible.