The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1911-05-25
TIE Sweet Potato
By Martin v. Calvin.

a sweet potato but it is a delusion
and snare when one tests it's sweet
ness. Our brethren up North excel
with the Irish or white potato. We
can grow good ones ourselves from
pure Eastern seed, but, as a rule, we
do not know just how to keep them.
The Southern sweet potato, regard
less of variety, is in a class to itself.
1t has it's adaptibility and it's special
friends. 1t will grow anywhere under
our sunny skies-the pumpkin yam
most popular with the white people
and the prolific red skin popular with
the colored people. Between these
two extremes stands the sugar yam,
the Georgia yam, the Texas vineless,
etc.
Many farmers have yet to set their
plants; many have not yet prepared
the soil and applied the fertilizer
for the proposed crop. Thousands
will reinforce their first crop by util-
izing vines which yield abundantly.
The sweet potato requires balanc-
ed ration in fertilizer. In order to
develop palata bleness on the one side
and keepableness on the other, there
must be developed just enough mois-
ETC., to make the potato we'll rounded.
In making a sweeter sweet potato,
a few years ago, I evolved a formula
that struck the happy mean. The
crop was large, the potatoes a good
average size and smoothe. "Grabbled"
in August, when the average sweet
potato is a myth in point of taste,
they were as sweet as the very best
are in mid-winter When banked,
the entire crop did not sustain loss
of a bushel
On the basis of ton, here is the
formula:
875 pounds of Is per cent acid
phosphate, 800 pounds of sulphate
of ammonia and 800 pounds of muri-
ate of potash. $50 to 500 pounds
per acre.
Sulphate of ammonia is to be pre-
ferred as source of nitrogen be-
cause it acts less quickly than nitrate
Of soda and more rapidly than cotton
meal.
I prefer muriate to the sulphate
of potash because the former tends
to the development of saccharine mat
ter better than the sulphate. The
doctors differ on this point, but
I speak from experience. For Irish
potatoes, I would use the sulphate
of potash because it tends to the de-
velopment of starch which makes the
popular e mealy potato"
Let some of our wide-awake farm
ers make a test of the two sources of
potash which I have named. The
percentum of each two is practically
the same In making the comparison,
bear in mind that you are supplying
the plant with the particular kind
of food they demand.
That, after all, is the point in the
use of fertilizer. l have Outlines
stressed it for the reason that it is
so important. A fertilizer that will
assist in the production of crop of
choice tomatoes will not make, in the
best acceptation of that term, crop
of Irish potatoes or cabbage or of
beans. 1t will, of course, help to
an extent, but in the end prove to be
a. failure.
A crop of pumpkin yams-150 to
400 bushels per acre-will, if carried
over winter, net the producer 81 to
81 to $1.25 per bushel. 1t is marvel
that the sweet potato crop of Georgia
and the other cotton states is compar-
atively small. We have the acreage,
and the crop is grown without diff
Guilty. In order to have an unfailing
market for crop of choice sweet
0&o+@ L.