Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/104



universal vegetable is a perennial, well known upon every table. It is a native of South America. In the vicinity of Quito, they are known under the name of Papas. They appear to have been known in Virginia as early as 1584, and were at that period cultivated by the Colonists. It is very amusing to observe the remarks of early writers upon their character, some saying they are only fit for “swine,” while others recommend them as a delicate dish. It is a species of a very extensive family of plants, inhabitants of every part of the globe, all of a forbidding aspect, and not a few of them of the most deadly poison, while others are being extensively cultivated both as food and luxury to man. Among them are the Egg-plant and the. Tomato. We are now arrived at a period of the history of the Potato when there appears to be a universal scourge or blight passed over the crop, in every country where it is cultivated—universal in its effects and as universally unaccounted for, some attributing it to one cause, while others take an altogether opposite view. It has always and does still appear to me to be an atmospheric disease, a kind of Cholera, as I termed it two years ago, which has threatened the past year nearly to extirpate the whole crop. We now predict that it has come to its height, and another season will produce a more healthy crop. Cultivation may promote health, though it will not avert the calamity. New soil in the past year has been more genial to the production of sound tubers, than old cultivated fields, though the former has not been entirely exempt from disease. The vines have always been affected after a few dull, cloudy, moist, warm days; these, succeeded by strong sunshine, made visible the first blighting effects. To eut off the stems close to the ground, as soon as the disease appeared, has invariably benefited, and in many instances, en-