CULTIVATION OF POTATOES.

Otago Witness, Issue 84, 25 December 1852, Page 2

CULTIVATION OF POTATOES.

(From the Maori Messenger.)

Each successive arrival from Australia only adds to our astonishment at the enormous quantities of gold that continue to be raised, aad at the thousands upon thousands of adventurers who are pouring in from every quarter of the world to gather it. Well may gold be abundant, when there are such immense bands of covetous diggers all intent upon its acquisition. Some few months ago it was estimated that, at Mount Alexander alone, there were upwards of 40,000 men thus employed ; but since that date the largest and finest ships, crowded with passengers, have been daily arriving ; and, in all probability, the number of the gold seekers is by this time much more than doubled. JNTo wonder, therefore, that gold should continue to be poured into Melbourne, and that they who witness and they who are told of such mighty accumulations should be dazzled by contemplation of the alluiing treasure.

It is little wonder to find every other source of Australian industry and Australian wealth abandoned for the maddening lust of gold, when we find numbers of our own fellow colonists'forsaking their peaceful homes and throwing away the means of rational independence to encounter the miseries, the privations, aifd the disappointments of the gold digger's lot. It is very true that immense heaps of gold are constantly being delivered at Sydney and Melbourne. It exercises a wonderful influence over the imagination to calculate the prodigious value of those heaps ; but if the toil, the anguish, the loss of health, strength, and of life, with which the various little earnings of the 40,000 or 100,000 men who have contributed to form those heaps could only be ascertained, we should, we doubt not, be told such a tale of the moral, social, and physical horrors of the gold digger's trade, as would be apt to appal the stoutest heart.

One thing is sufficiently obvious that, for the present, the trade of gold digging has superseded if not entirely destroyed every other source of Australian industry. Every succeeding day, therefore, only the more clearly proves that to the industry and energy of the New Zealand farmers the vast and accumulating masses of Australian population must trust for food.

We have already said quite enough to incite our native husbandmen to extended and unremitting exertion. The reward which it is in their own power to reap cannot be well overestimated ; and our most anxious endeavour has been, and shall be, to direct them, as far as we are able, in prosecution of the most successful course.

There will not, we incline to think, be a more extensive demand for any article of food than for potatoes. To insure a steady continuance of that demand, it will be of the last consequence that the potato shall be of sound and excellent quality. Our growers will do well to bear in mind that they will have to compete with the fine potatoes of Van Diemen's Land, and with the disadvantage of a much longer passage to test their keeping qualities.

It is to be hoped that some ".experience may have been gained from the heavy losses sustained by the total decay of potatoes shipped from Auckland to California. Much of that loss was no doubt attributable to, the grub; but still, much may also be attributed to the inferior quality and condition of the potatoes that were shipped. It is quite true, that in shipping potatoes to an Australian port, the duration of the voyage will not occupy onetenth of the time, and that the heating and vegetation of the roots will be proportionally abated. But, still, as it is quite evident that

we have a potato disease existing in this country, it becomes a matter of the last importance to the farmer and the merchant that every possible effort should be made to eradicate that disease, and that we should strive by the greatest care in rejecting bad seed to produce an " article which shall not only be able to encounter the risks of the voyage, but to establish the reputation of the New Zealand potato upon an equal, if not a superior standard to that of Van Diemen's Land. To accomplish so desirable a purpose, we can discover no means so likely, as by producing a fresh and vigorous body of sets, by raising them from the seed. Even in the finest potato disstricts of Van Diemen's Land, the root has been gradually deteriorating. It has been found to be diseased at the heart, and the flavour, quality, and power of keeping greatly impaired. " It is a principle" (says an American writer) " that plants, which are usually propagated from the bulb, root, or tuber, loose after a time their procreative or vivifying power, and it is necessary to resort to the original element for seed." We are happy to have it in our power to transcribe for the benefit of our native potato growers, the plain and simple instructions for raising potatoes from seed. We urge them, as

they value their own best interests, to profit by

those instructions ; inasmuch as by raising the x potato from its seed they will not only be likely \o obtain several varieties, but, what Aald be of infi»itely greater importance, they may succeed in introducing a potato far better adapted to the climate of their country than those produced by the sets from which they have so long been accustomed to propagate. " Without inquiring whether the rot, which has so extensively prevailed in the potato, is owing to the fact that it is cultivated from the tuber, and not from the seed, it is true that certain varieties of the potato DO resist the disease more than others. It is desirable to ascertain whether new varieties raised from the seed are less liable to be attacked by the disease than old, and experiments should be extensively tried, and the results carefully noted. " It becomes therefore desirable to know the

best mode of propagating the potato from the

. seed. For this purpose, select good, fair-sized, potato balls (or apples) from the best vaHpties of potatoes ; cut the ball open, and wash Be pulp containing the seed in water, until the ■seeds are entirely separated from the pulp and clean, then strain them out of the , water and dry them ; examined with a microscope, they have the appearance of the seeds of the summer squash. The seeds should be started in a hot-bed, so that the plants will be about three inches high when the weather is so warm that there is nojlanger from frost. They should then be carefully transplanted into warm, rich, and mellow earth, and set in drills 2§ feet apart, and 10 inches from each other in the drills. The vines of the potatoes thus set by me in 1849 grew strong and thrifty, 3 feet in height, blossomed, and bore balls, from which I have now the seeds. Many of the potatoes attained a fair size, weighing in many instances six ounces each, and were good edible potatoes. In one season I have thus obtained over one hundred varieties. For two successive years the potatoes raised from the seed have been in no wise affected by the rot, and if there was not a potato in America, I should not despair of having a tolerable supply of good

edible potatoes the first year from the seed.

The common impression that three years are necessary to propagate potatoes from the seed is erroneous, and I impute the rapid growth and large size in the instance alludeed to, to the perfect mode of saving the seed, and to jhigh and judicious cultivation." Wood ashes, in addition to a rich mould, are

exceedingly valuable fertilizers of a potato crop.

We have thus furnished our native readers with a knowledge of the means of improving their potato crops, by which we trust, at the time the apples are formed on the growing potato, they will not fail to profit. It is only by