Peninsula Enterprise, February 19, 1887

Varieties of Sweet Potatoes.

Fields -- Crops - Sweet potatoes : Seed and slips

MR. EDITOR -- In your paper of February 12th, an article appears on "Varieties of Sweet Potatoes" in which reference is made to a book of Mr. Fritz. -- From that book the names of several varieties of potatoes is quoted. I have no doubt but that several of them are one and the same. In my opinion there are very few varieties of sweet potatoes. I have been acquainted from my earliest recollection with the yellow, Spanish, and red -- later there has been introduced some white varieties. In my boyhood the mode of planting sweet potatoes was by putting the whole or a piece of the potato in the hill. In 1840 my father, not having enough seed, drew from the hill sprouts and set out in his patch -- the first sprouting that I ever knew of. From that time this mode of planting was introduced. In the article referred to, it is asserted that varieties of potatoes readily mix -- this I deny. I don't believe that you can take two varieties of sweet potatoes and mix them in any way.

I have planted white, red and yellow, side by side and I have never seen any sign of mixing and I hold that there is no way to which they could be mixed unless it was through the blossom. The white varieties I have seen in bloom, but never the yellow. Our season is not long enough for those that do blossom to mature their seed. I wrote to the Agricultural Department a few years ago, if there was any part of our country where sweet potatoes matured the seed from the blossom and if there had ever been any attempt to hybridize them. -- They answered, that no such attempt had been made, and they did not know whether they matured their seed or not. I believe that the soil and climate changes the shape and habit of the different varieties somewhat, hence the multiplicity of names. I write this article, hoping that it may provoke a discussion of this subject, so that we may get the opinion of growers generally.

LEE.

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Farmers -- Farmers' organizationsFields -- Crops - Sweet potatoes : Quality control

MR. EDITOR: As the question, what is best to be done to secure to the farmers of the Eastern Shore higher prices for their produce, is being agitated, I take the liberty to offer a few suggestions; and in doing so, will follow the argument slightly outlined by you, in your late editorial, viz; "It may be in the preparation of our produce for market." No better proof can be given to establish this fact to show the low estimate placed on the value of Eastern Shore sweets, (this is the main crop), as compared with the same crop raised in other sections. Sweets are extensively raised in New Jersey and Delaware, and are known in the markets as "Jerseys." These potatoes are quoted and sold in all the markets, from the time of their first digging until the crop has been disposed of, at from fifty cents to one dollar a barrel more than "Eastern Shores's." Now if this difference was due to the fact that Jerseys had superior eating qualities, the reason would be obvious at once, but that is not so. Eastern Shore's have no superiors in their cooking qualities, in fact, that is not the objection raised by dealers and consumers. It is entirely due to the fact that too many of the farmers look upon a barrel of potatoes filled with No. 1 on top, No. 2 in the middle and culls at the bottom as a marketable No. 1 barrel of sweets, and put it on the market to compete with a Jersey barrel that if marked No. 1 has neither No. 2 or culls in it. This mode of shipping has been so long continued that even a No. 1 barrel of sweets coming from that section, is bought with suspicion, however highly it may recommended; the buyer only being satisfied after he has reached the bottom of the barrel. This holds good under every sale, unless the purchaser has bought the "mark" before, and found it as recommended. If this is not so, i.e., carelessness in handling the Eastern Shore potato crop by the farmers, why do we not have the same trouble with other Eastern Shore crops?

Eastern Shore berries have an excellent rating; Eastern Shore peas, if picked at the proper time fetch full market price; so do Eastern Shore radishes, asparagus, etc. These crops grow uniform, and do not need handling and classifying, and go to market equal to the same crops grown at other places. Twenty years ago Virginia sweets sold for as much more, as they now sell for less, than Jerseys. Then they were shipped in bulk, and culled at the landings if needed to be, before being received by the captains. While there may be other important evils that need correction -- drummers dispensed with, lower freight rates secured, barrel factories established, "middle men" held to stricter account, yet all of this will but poorly accomplish the end desired, if the present careless way in shipping is to be continued, and the newly organized association will have failed in the purpose if it fails to remedy this evil. Raise the standard of the crop. Let Eastern Shore sweets become, as they have right to be, the leading and most reliable sweet potatoes known on the market. Raise fewer, but better stock. Ship those that are marketable and feed to your live stock those that are not, and my word for it, you will be fully repaid for the labor and time you give the crop.

SUBSCRIBER.

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Farmers -- InnovationFields -- crops - Sweet potatoes : Acreage

MR. EDITOR: I have read from time to time the letters in the ENTERPRISE in regard to raising and shipping produce especially sweet potatoes. Being at this end of the line and having had some experience in the selling of sweet potatoes, I may be excused for venturing to publish in your paper what I am convinced is the only solution to the many and important points in controversy appertaining to the great staple of the Eastern Shore.

The trouble is not to be found in the money paid the middle men as many of your farmers have long thought. Neither is it in that paid for transportation. Both railroads and commission men are poorly paid already. When freight was 50 cents and commissions 25 cents per barrel, farmers were paid better for their potatoes than they are now. Every year gets worse and worse and yet every year sees a reduction of cost of transportation and handling in market. Now sweet potatoes are really a luxury; and to bring a good price must not be too common. There must not be so many of them produced. As long as you keep thousands of barrels piled up on Bowley's Wharf and the steamboat wharves in Baltimore and on the docks in New York and other cities every autumn, you will forever experience the trouble of low prices; and railroads may transport them free of charge and merchants sell them without commissions, aye even giving a chromo with every barrel, and every man, woman and child whose living shall depend upon the profits arising out of sweet potato raising will starve to death at the same time I and hundreds of others in New York who want a mess for our families will have to pay as now, at least $6 a barrel, because they are used only as a luxury.

To supply this demand, it does not take, comparatively speaking, a great many.

One half of the quantity raised on the Eastern Shore of Virginia is amply sufficient for that purpose.

Cannot your farmers turn a part of their attention at least, to some other industry? The sweet potato costs too much labor and care to be thrown into dump carts and the river. It hurts my feelings to see so royal a luxury so wasted and abused when I know its very sap is imbued with the sweat of my own people, who year after year are so heartlessly struggling for the merest pittance of a living.

Very truly yours,

N. J. W. LECATO.

New York, Feb. 8, '87.

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Moral -- Alcohol

MR. EDITOR: Our attention is called to a letter of the Onancock correspondent of the Baltimore Sun under date of February 6th with this peculiar head line, "Prohibition trials in Accomac." Would it not have been more to the point to have said "Whisky trials in Accomac?" Is the correspondent a friend of the jurors of whom he writes? If so, "They are murdered in the house of their friend." We had supposed that the many failures to convict in these "Whisky trials" was a lack of evidence, but this "Knight of the quill" says not so. "The prosecution has been faithfully conducted and the failure to convict is," not for want of evidence, but, "from the division of public sentiment prevailing in the county regarding the expediency of such legislation, and the unwillingness of a large element of our population to punish persons for violating a law they do not approve." So he gives us the inside of this whole affair. He speaks for the juries, that have "hung" every "whisky trial" since local option went into effect. He tells us these twelve men, good and true, accept places in the jury box, swearing that they will give true verdicts according to the evidence, and then sit in judgment on the constitutionality and justice of the law; defeating justice by the trick known as "hanging the jury." If his statements are true, and the facts bear him out, he gives the juries referred to a very unenviable reputation. He then offers us a panacea for this wholesale violation of the law; "rigid high licence." The offering of the remedy suggests the following query: If we can't convict a man for open violation of the present prohibitory law, can we secure a jury, who will convict a man for violation of a "rigid high license law?"

A.