Page:Treatise on Cultivation of the Potato.djvu/44

 be covered by these mouldings, which should be occasionally repeated, until they are fit for transplanting. To prepare them for this, about the end of April they must be plentifully refreshed with air; and, two hours before removing them, they must be plentifully watered all over, and the glasses covered with bass mats, to prevent the sun, if shining at the time, from scorching the plants. Take each plant up carefully, with a ball of earth attached to it, and plant them in trenches, as you would celery, only with this difference, the distance from plant to plant in the lines must be 18 inches; and if the sun should be shining out strong at the time of planting, a flower-pot should be placed over each to prevent flagging; for, with all your care in taking up, a good many of the fibres will be broken. After the plants have established themselves, remove the pots, and earth up occasionally, as long as the space between them will admit of it. The produce of new kinds of potatoes raised in this manner is generally prodigious for twelve years afterwards. The best manure is yellow moss and rotten horse-dung." (Gard. Mag. vi. 440.)

"It is to be remarked, that the tubers of every seedling should be kept separate, as scarcely two will be of a similar habit and quality, whilst many will be comparatively worthless, and but few of particular excellence. If the seed is obtained from a red potato that flowered in the neighbourhood of a white-tubered variety, the seedlings, in all probability, will in part resemble both of their parents; but seldom or never does a seedling resemble exactly the original stock. At all events, only such should be preserved as are recommended by their superior earliness, size, flavour, or fertility."

"The early varieties—if planted on little heaps of earth, with a stake in the middle, and when the plants are about four inches high, being secured to the stakes with shreds and nails, and the earth washed away from the bases of the stems by means of a strong current of water, so that the fibrous roots only enter the soil—will blossom and perfect seed."

Mr. Colin Macpherson, of Viewbank Terrace, Dundee, gives the following particulars, showing the practicability of perfecting potatoes from the seed in one season:—"From seeds of twelve potato 'plums' sown this season, in the first week of March, over 750 plants were produced, which I planted on a small