Page:Treatise on Cultivation of the Potato.djvu/42

 Having now reached the end of my arguments, and my narrative; I proceed to reprint some instructions for growth of the plant from the seed and a few results of experiments.

"In February, if you have the convenience of a hot-bed or hot-house, let the seed be sown thinly in flower-pots of rich light earth, and cover very lightly. In a month or six weeks, or as soon as the young plants are an inch high, they are to be raised carefully, and planted singly in small pots, and placed in a frame where they will have a very little warmth, and where they must have plenty of air and water as required until the middle of May, when they may be turned out of the pots into the open ground, without breaking the ball. By this treatment the potatoes will be so large the first year as to enable you to judge of their merits. If you cannot command artificial warmth, sow the seed in shallow drills of light rich earth early in April, and transplant the young plants in rich earth in June; raise the potatoes at the usual time, and treat them afterwards in the usual way: they will prove themselves the second year." (Gard. Chron. 1844, 806.)

"Zander, Count Arnim's gardener, at Boitzenburg (in Mecklenburg), has succeeded in producing a good crop of potatoes from seed the same year as it was sown, and as large as those from sets; and those seedling potatoes are entirely free from disease. His plan is as follows: he gathers the apples before the frost sets in (according to others a slight frost does not injure them), and keeps them in a dry place till the end of January. The apples are then crushed with the hand into a vessel, where they lie from six to eight days to rot, that the seeds may be easily separated from the pulp. Water is then poured on, and the seed is washed and dried like cucumber seed, and put away in a dry place. At the end of March, or beginning of April, the seed is sown in a hot-bed, and treated much the same as other culinary plants. If there is a convenient place for a hot-bed near a wall or house, exposed to the sun, glass is not necessary; the plants may be treated like tuberous plants, but as they are very susceptible of frost at night, they should be covered with straw or boards, which can easily be done, as the bed is surrounded with boards set in the ground, upon which the covering can be laid without injuring the plants. In May, if the plants are well grown, they can be planted out in a light soil about the usual distance that sets are planted. Zander,