The Potato - With Information on Varieties, Seed Selection, Cultivation and Diseases of the Potato

James A. S. Watson

Description

This book offers a detailed guide to cultivating potatoes, with information on varieties, seed selection, cultivation, diseases of the potato, and much more. Written in clear, concise language and complete with simple instructions and a wealth of other useful information, this text constitutes an invaluable guide to those with an interest in growing potatoes. It will make for a worthy addition to collections of farming and kitchen gardening literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Quality of Potatoes', 'Varieties', 'First Early Varieties', 'Second Earlies', 'Maincrops', 'Selection of Seed', 'Boxing Potatoes', 'Soil and Climate', 'Place in Rotation', 'Preparation and Planting', 'Manuring', 'After-Cultivation', 'Spraying', 'Lifting Potatoes', 'Storing Potatoes', etcetera. We are proud to republish this vintage text, now complete with a new introduction on farming.

Sujets

• Jardinage
• Techniques de jardinage
• Potager
• Kitchen garden
• Technique
• Gardening
• Vegetable
• Techniques
• Vegetables

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 07 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781473354388
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Potato
With Information on Varieties, Seed Selection, Cultivation and Diseases of the Potato
By
James A. S. Watson James A. More
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Vegetable Growing at Home
(Kitchen Garden)
Whether you have a massive plot, or just a few planters, growing vegetables is satisfying as well as healthy. It also has a long history, dating back to French Renaissance potagers and Victorian Kitchen gardens. Kitchen gardens in turn have emerged from the Cottage Garden , the earliest of which were much more practical than their modem descendants. These were working class gardens, with an emphasis on vegetables and herbs, along with some fruit trees, perhaps a beehive and even livestock, with flowers only used to fill any spaces in-between. The traditional potager / kitchen garden, also known in Scotland as a kailyaird , is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden, possessing a different history as well as design, from traditional family farm plots.
The kitchen garden may serve as the central feature of an ornamental, all-season landscape, or it may be little more than a humble vegetable plot. It is a source of herbs, vegetables and fruits, but it is often also a structured garden space, sometimes incorporating beautiful geometric designs. The historical design precedent is from the Gardens of the French Renaissance and Baroque Garden la fran aise eras, where flowers (edible and non-edible) and herbs were planted alongside vegetables to enhance the garden s beauty. More common in the UK however, are simpler vegetable gardens (also known as patches or plots), which exist purely to grow vegetables - aside from any aesthetic purpose. It will typically include a compost heap and several plots of divided areas of land, intended to grow one or two types of plant in each plot. These plots are ordinarily divided into rows, with an assortment of vegetables grown in the different lines.
With worsening economic conditions and increased interest in organic and sustainable living, many people are turning to vegetable gardening as a supplement to their family s diet. Food grown in the back yard consumes little if any fuel for shipping or maintenance, and the grower can be sure of what exactly was used to grow it. Such means of organic gardening have become increasingly popular for the modern home gardener, and fit in with broader trends towards sustainability and permaculture. Through each person using the land and resources available to them, the home vegetable-grower has perhaps unwittingly become a part of this movement; a branch of ecological design and engineering, that develops sustainable, self-maintaining agricultural systems. The term originally referred to permanent agriculture but was expanded to stand also for permanent culture , as it was seen that social aspects were integral to a truly sustainable system.
Permaculture s core tenets revolve around care for the earth, care for the people and return of surplus; a key element is maximising useful connections between the various components, and synergy of the final design. This may sound hard to achieve, but by making and storing one s own foodstuffs, this helps to minimise waste, human labour and energy input - you have already started! Frequently, when growing vegetables in the domestic gardens, herb gardens will play a large part; they are normally purely functional, although many also arrange and clip the plants into ornamental patterns. Such herbs are used to flavour food in cooking, though they may also be used in other ways, such as discouraging pests, providing pleasant scents, or serving medicinal purposes (such as a physic garden), among others. Many herbs also grow well in pots / containers, giving the kitchen gardener the added benefit of mobility. Mint is an especially good example of a herb advisable to keep in a container - or its roots take over the whole garden.
Some of the easiest vegetables to grow are French beans; easy to sow and don t need support, so are easy to tend. Peas too are fantastic, as well as being fun to harvest for children. Beetroots, courgettes and lettuces are also good vegetables for beginners. The widespread uses, practical as well as edible, make vegetables a perfect thing to grow at home; and dependent on location and climate - they can be very low-maintenance crops. Even though technically a fruit, growing one s own fresh, juicy tomatoes is one of the great pleasures of summer gardening, and if the gardener doesn t have much room, hanging baskets are a good solution. The types, methods and approaches to growing vegetables are myriad, and far too numerous to be discussed in any detail here in this introduction, but there are always easy ways to get started for the complete novice. We hope that the reader is inspired by this book on vegetables and kitchen gardens - and is encouraged to start, or continue their own cultivations. Good Luck!
Contents
THE POTATO
THE POTATO
T HE potato ( Solanum tuberosum ) was introduced from South America in the sixteenth century, but in those early days it was regarded rather as a curiosity than as an article of commerce, and it was not until about two centuries later that it was cultivated to any extent on a field scale.
As a producer of human food the potato is the most valuable crop grown in this country; it is cheap, and its dietetic value is considerably higher than was for a long time supposed. As a food for stock, especially pigs, it is of great importance, but because only a certain proportion of the crop is marketable and there is a considerable residue of diseased, damaged, and small tubers, which can be used only as stock food, it is not customary to cultivate the crop for this purpose. Boiled potatoes will develop acidity and ensile quite satisfactorily if they are packed tightly in a pit, tank, or other suitable container. The silage can be used for pigs and poultry when fresh potatoes are not available.
The potato crop has, however, a number of disadvantages. Its bulky nature makes it not only costly but difficult to market, and for this reason, even where the soil is suitable, very few potatoes are grown at any great distance from market centres. Again, even where a ready market is at hand, the large number of workers required for timely planting and harvesting restricts cultivation (on a large scale) to districts where casual labour is available. The crop was formerly very speculative, the yield being variable and the demand very inelastic, so that in years of high yield the market was glutted and prices fell to an unprofitable level. Prices are now fixed in advance and a market is assured, though the grower cannot always sell at the time he would prefer.
Quality of Potatoes. -The farmer, of course, requires a variety that will produce the greatest possible yield per acre, but he must also consider the buyer s point of view or his crop will not meet with a ready sale. Apart from yield, the most important points are keeping quality and resistance to disease. Potatoes have to be stored for considerable periods, and it is disastrous if a large proportion decays or deteriorates in the clamp, as a good crop may in this way be reduced to an inferior one, and the expense of picking over diseased tubers is extremely heavy. Not only should the variety be capable of resisting disease and decay in the pit, but it should withstand the effects of the many and serious pests that beset it in the field, the most devastating of which are blight, wart disease, and the virus or degeneration diseases. No varieties yet in general cultivation are immune from blight, though many are resistant in greater or less degree. Moreover there is real promise that completely immune forms may be produced by hybridization between cultivated varieties and various wild species of Solanum . As regards Wart disease, it is fortunate that many completely immune varieties have been produced, so that it is possible to grow healthy crops on land that is heavily infested with the disease. For general economy it is also advisable to obtain varieties that develop their tubers at a suitable depth below the surface; if they protrude above the soil they become greened by the light and are then difficult to sell, while if too deep they are difficult to get out with an ordinary potato digger and, apart from the numbers that are sliced and damaged, many may be left in the ground to become a source of trouble in the following crops. The potato is the principal cleaning crop in the rotation of many farms, and a variety that develops a large amount of surface growth and leafage is most efficient as a smotherer of weeds, and most likely to leave the soil in a clean condition. There are varieties that cannot be cut for seed as they do not grow well from cut sets, while at the other extreme there are potatoes that give excellent yields when cut to a single eye.
From the point of view of the consumer the cooking quality of the variety is most important. In England, white-fleshed sorts that become mealy on boiling are generally the most popular for the ordinary domestic trade. On the Continent yellow-fleshed potatoes possessing a waxy texture are preferred. Varieties that produce either very large or very small tubers are not in demand, and varieties that are irregular in shape or deep in the eye, and are consequently difficult to peel without occasioning considerable loss, are never popular. The colour of the skin varies through a wide range-purple, red, pink, red-eyed, russet, and white all being common, but colour does not matter much when the other qualities of the variety are satisfactory. The shape may be round, oval, or kidney, but this is of lit