. Cyclopedia of American horticulture, comprising suggestions for cultivation of horticultural plants, descriptions of the species of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and ornamental plants sold in the United States and Canada, together with geographical and biographical sketches. Gardening. SWEET POTATO SWLET POTATO Propagation is effected altogether by means of shoots, mostly those from the root. While blooms are often found on the vines —particularly in the extreme South — they are nearly always imperfect and invariably drop from the pedicel. No ovaries ever develop. Therefore the remarkab
. Cyclopedia of American horticulture, comprising suggestions for cultivation of horticultural plants, descriptions of the species of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and ornamental plants sold in the United States and Canada, together with geographical and biographical sketches. Gardening. SWEET POTATO SWLET POTATO Propagation is effected altogether by means of shoots, mostly those from the root. While blooms are often found on the vines —particularly in the extreme South — they are nearly always imperfect and invariably drop from the pedicel. No ovaries ever develop. Therefore the remarkable series of rapid transformations observ- able in the Sweet Potato must be credited entirely to an active and persistent tendency in the plant to bud varia- tion—in effecting which it must be admitted to be a veritable kaleidoscope. Propagation.—"Draws," or developed sprouts from root-buds, supply the readiest and, indeed, the only practicable means of propagation. Tubers of the last season's crop are "bedded " for this purpose; that is, an outdoor hotbed is constructed in which the tubers are placed in a single layer, close together, and covered with several inches of soil early in spring. In a few weeks the latent buds of the tubers, under the stimulus of the heat from the fermenting manure, will have sprouted, and by the time all danger from frost has passed a dense growth of "; or "slips " will cover the bed. These are removed from the tubers, set bj"" hand in the field in rows four feet apart—the plants eighteen inches, generally, in the row. The size of the bedded tubers does not affect the crop. As good results are obtained from small as from large potatoes. Even the smallest tubers or "strings" consistently planted from year to year, produce as heavily as the choicest selections. Tliis is but logical if we remember that the Sweet Potato is merely an enlarged, inaxial, fieahy root, and heavy tub
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