How to Secure Early Potatoes.

Otago Witness, Issue 1865, 19 August 1887, Page 8

How to Secure Early Potatoes.

There is a method of bringing potatoes on by a kind of forcing, yet without having recourse to the frame for the purpose : it is this : Dig a small trench a foot deep, fill it with hot stable manure, and afterwards tread it in so as to make it occupy abour. half the space. Do this until you come to within some three or four inches of the surface soil, when upon the trodden manure fill up to the surface with your ordinary pulverised soil. On this soil lay out, & foot apart, good early selling potatoes, and let your rows be some two and a half feet apart. Next cover over your potatoes with the soil which you have dug out in order to form your trench, only take care that it is thoroughly well pulverised, and that there are no lumps in it. Let this covering be to the depth of four inches, while upon the whole put an addition protection of peas haulm of a thickness sufficient to do three things — first, to keep in the heat ; secondly, to keep off the approach of frost and east wind ; and thirdly, not so thick as to exclude light and air. As soon as your potatoes under these circumstances have come through, keep them earthed up, protected as advised, during frost and wind, but during really warm spring rains and sunshine they may be uncovered. Should the season prove a very dry one, a little water will be advisable, but it

is more likely that this will not be required. A fair and' an early crop of potatoes ought to reward you for your pains.—" CasselTs Family Magazine."