Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money We Made by ItCoulton, Miss
History
Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money We Made by It
Coulton, Miss
Agriculture; Farm life
As I wish to make this little work a complete manual to the "farm of
four acres," I must insert a few remarks on the management of the
kitchen-garden. Ours consisted of an acre; and, large as our family
was, we did not require more than half of it to supply us with
vegetables, independent of potatoes.
We strongly advise any one who may have more garden than they may want
for vegetables, to plant the surplus with potatoes. Even if the
"disease" does affect part of the crop, the gain will still be great,
providing you keep animals to consume them; for they must indeed be
bad if the pigs will not thrive on them when boiled. Poultry,
likewise, will eat them in preference to any other food.
We had something more than half an acre planted one year when the
disease was very prevalent; the crop suffered from it to a
considerable extent, but the yield was so large that we stored
sufficient to supply the family from September till the end of April,
and had enough of those but slightly affected to fatten four pigs,
beside having a large bowlful boiled daily for the poultry. The worst
parts were always cut out before they were boiled, and neither pigs
nor poultry were allowed to touch them raw.
It is much the best plan to consume all the potatoes you may grow,
rather than save any of them for seed. It will be but a slight
additional expense to have fresh kinds sent from quite a different
locality, and they will thrive better, and not be so liable to the
disease.
They should always be dug before the slightest appearance of frost,
and place on straw in a dry place, where they can be conveniently
looked over once a fortnight, when any that show symptoms of decay
should be removed and boiled at once for the pigs. By this method very
few will be wholly wasted; instead of eating potatoes you will eat
pork, that is, if you have plenty of skim-milk. I do not at all know
how pigs would like them without they were mixed up with that fluid.
We have tried, with great success, planting them in rows alternately
with other vegetables. When they are all together, the haulms in wet
seasons grow so rankly that they become matted together; and then, as
the air is excluded from the roots, it renders them liable to disease.
We have tried cutting the haulm off to within a few inches of the
ground; but this, the gardener said, proved detrimental to the roots.
We afterwards tried a row of potatoes, then cabbages, then carrots,
and then again came the potatoes. We once planted them between the
currant and gooseberry bushes, but it was as bad, or worse, than when
a quantity of them were by themselves; for when the trees made their
midsummer shoots the leaves quite shut out air and light from the
potatoes, and when dug they proved worse than any other portions of
the crop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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