36. Intensification
If we are to make West Highland crofting serve as a
whole-time job for a man, with the occasional help of his family, we must
intensify the quality of our cultivation. That has been the theme throughout
this book, for I am one who questions the oft-repeated notion that crofts
should be made bigger if they are to support a family. Admittedly, if there
are only one or two acres of arable land on a croft, it is not enough to get
a living from, but from five to ten acres of well-worked arable land would
keep a man busy if he were producing intensive crops. My experience of
enlarging crofts till they are the size of small farms has been to find the
standard of husbandry going down, so that before long the enlarged croft is
no more profitable than were the two of which it was composed. And remember
this : we deplore the depopulation of the West and yet accept the fact that
our arable land is strictly limited in quantity ; therefore, enlarging
crofts means still further lessening the number of families that can exist
on the land. The progressive way is to intensify, so that a much larger crop
can be got from a given area.
Intensification is open to those who have crofts on the
western seaboard not more than a hundred feet above the sea, and should
particularly be followed by crofters who have a bit of light soil in a
sheltered position just above the high spring tides. The mild climate, free
from early and late frosts, allows fullest working and heavy manuring of
such ground. Intensification is not possible on the high inland places such
as Tomintoul and the Braes of Glenlivet. Improvement should be the motto of
those places rather than intensification.
I am going so far as to say that hundreds of West
Highland crofts are wasting their splendid advantages by not considering
early potatoes and certain market-garden produce as equal in importance to
livestock rearing. There are soils on the volcanic islands such as Mull,
Canna and Muck which are naturally rich, very warm and well drained, and
which could grow early potatoes to reach the market in the second week of
June. There are a few specially favoured spots where potatoes can be dug
about 31st May. Even on this shelterless Tanera, which is the most northerly
inhabited island off the West Highland mainland and quite devoid of shelter,
I reckon to dig my first earlies by 21st June. The soil here is naturally
poor, but plenty of seaweed and manure have brought it into grand fettle. My
earlies were planted between 7th and 15th March and were of good size in the
latter half of June. The crop was then about 7 to 8 tons to the acre, and I
could have sold it for £16 to £18 a ton without carrying it farther than the
length of my own pier. Definite reasons caused me to keep my potatoes,
running them on as a main crop and lifting a much greater weight, but had
there been no war, all the potatoes would have been lifted and sold by the
third week of July.
One of the secrets of growing early potatoes is in
getting going early in the year.
37. Choice of Seed
January is quite late enough to begin work on the year's
crop of early potatoes if seed has to be got from a supplier. When you are
growing them for the first time in a serious way, there may be some
difficulty in getting seed potatoes of the earliest varieties early enough
to allow of their being set out in sprouting or chitting boxes, so orders
should be placed as soon as possible and their urgency made plain. A large
proportion of seed in subsequent years would be of your own growing and
could be handled at the right time.
The utmost care is necessary if early potatoes are to be
a successful crop, for it must be remembered that the aim is not merely a
high yield but the fact of earliness. Seven days of earliness may be worth
several pounds sterling on an acre of this crop.
Let us talk of the seed then, before ever it goes into
the ground. The varieties for serious consideration are few: from my own
experience on Tanera, there is no need to go beyond three—Duke of York or
Midlothian Early as it is also called, Arran Pilot or Epicure; but it may be
found that certain other varieties may do better than these in particular
places. Arran Pilot is a heavy-cropping, white-fleshed, long potato which
comes as early as any. In my opinion it is inclined to be soft, but that
does not matter much in earlies sold for immediate consumption. It looks
very attractive when dug and is a ready seller.
My main bulk of earlies is always Duke of York : this is
one of the finest potatoes ever bred because it does more than merely give a
heavy crop very early ; it is of good quality from the beginning and can be
run on as a main crop if it is unsold as an early. Duke of York is as firm
in April as in September and does not throw out long sprouts in the pit
anything like so much as many other varieties. Epicure is a good first
early, but the quality is not so good as Duke of York, the eyes are rather
deep and the tubers tend to be irregular in shape. The great point about
Epicure is that the haulms are hardy and can stand up to four degrees of
frost. When you find a good variety of early for your land, stick to it and
do not bother overmuch about others, for your pitting, sprouting and
marketing problems are simplified.
Even with one variety you will find yourself with several
distinct lots of seed. It is my experience that new seed brought into the
West does not give the best and hardiest crop in the first year. The second
year finds it doing much better and it will do perfectly well for four
years. The best plan, therefore, is to rely on second, third or fourth year
seed for the bulk of your crop, and buy just enough new seed each year to
use its crop almost wholly as seed in the second year.
The first crop which is to be gathered mainly for seed
should be lifted early. Immature seed gives a bigger crop the following year
than that which has been allowed to mature in the ground. But this unripe
seed should not be clamped. It should be put in the sprouting boxes
straight away.
38. Sprouting or Chitting
Sprouting or chitting boxes are in effect flat trays with
verticle handles which allow of the boxes being stacked, and light and air
to get in to each tray of seed. The boxes can be made from driftwood in
winter time and should be 30 in. long by 18 in. wide, 3 in. deep and with
the uprights at the ends going to 5½ in. The
bottoms should be slatted, to give spaces of ¾ in.
If this size is too large for handling, 24 in. by 12 in. can be used and a
piece nailed between the uprights so that the box can be carried in one
hand.
The potatoes should lie in the boxes not much more than
one layer thick, or some of the tubers will be denied the light which is so
necessary in sprouting the seed. Sprouting makes for greater earliness and a
bigger crop, and the practice allows the grower to take out
any diseased tubers which do not show signs of sprouting. Access of light
means that the sprouts come short, green and strong, very different from the
long and limp streamers which have to be rubbed off potatoes coming out of
the pit.
Potatoes which have been lifted before they are ripe and
put into chitting boxes soon go green themselves, and in that condition are
in some measure resistant to frost. But the seed should, nevertheless, be
protected from frost in the barn where they are set for sprouting because it
has been found that chilled seed, in which no damage can be detected, gives
a reduced crop.
Early seed potatoes should not be too small, or the young
plant is short of reserve food in the period it is changing over to feeding
from the soil. On the other hand, there is no harm in planting big seed for
an early crop. I myself have cut very large sprouted potatoes and have not
noticed any significant loss of earliness, but the practice cannot generally
be recommended. The ideal size for seed would be that which passes through a
1¾ inch riddle, but remains on the 1½
inch.
I can imagine some of my crofter friends pulling me up
short and saying, "Where would we have room about the buildings of a croft
to put these chitting boxes? And none of our barns or byres are very light
anyway." All this is true enough; I am in the same fix myself. I suggest
that in those townships which would especially suit early potatoes, the
crofters should in the first year or two make sure of the fact and do as
best they can about sprouting, and then co-operate to build a chitting house
where the seed of the whole township could be sprouted.
SKERRAY, NORTH COAST, SUTHERLAND
This is out of the West Highland area, but it is what
I should think many West Highland and Hebridean crofters would consider
the perfect site for a township. The ground looks clear of rocks and has
an easy slope, the beach is sheltered and an easy one for hauling or
launching boats, and above all, the trim pier which means ease of
handling and absolute shelter inside the bend. From the crofter's point
of view, a 5 cwt. crane on the quay would be a great help. Piers are too
often considered merely as hitching posts for steamers. The coast looks
good for lobsters and there is good line-fishing offshore. In the
distance is the now deserted Isle of Roan which would have been a good
enough place to live had the landing been a bit better. At least, I
should have called it easy country after six years of Tanera. Perhaps
the north wind makes this a hard country.
One of the large types of box holds about a third of a
hundredweight of seed, which means 60 boxes to the ton or 45 boxes to the
acre of crop. It is unlikely that any township would be growing more than 10
acres of early potatoes, so a chitting house for 480 boxes would be plenty
big enough. Say a fairly low house was built to hold the boxes in tiers of
12, with 1 ft. 6 in. between boxes and wall all round, 6 in. between the
boxes and a 4-ft. alleyway up the middle; a building 32 ft. 6 in. by 15 ft.
would hold them all. Ventilation should be provided along the ridge and at
the foot of the walls. If the roof were of corrugated iron there would need
to be a layer of sarking below to provide better insulation.
Here, then, are our seed potatoes in the chitting boxes
so that they can sprout, and in fancy we have gone the length of building a
co-operative chitting house to sprout the whole early potato crop of a
township so placed that in relation to elevation, nearness to the sea, soil
and shelter, it was a likely place for growing this profitable crop.
The advantages of a communal chitting house over using
one's own barn or byre are several : first, it is possible to exercise
proper control over temperature, which should not fall below 400
F.; second, most barns are too dark and the seed must have light if
it is going to grow short green sprouts, and another great thing is that in
a chitting house there would be no accidents from inquisitive cows and
destructive hens getting at the seed. (One of my cows recently cleared a
whole hundredweight and never turned a hair!) One man in the township would
make himself responsible for periodically moving round the boxes of potatoes
and for supervising the ventilation. Fumigation of the chitting house each
autumn with nicotine before the seed is put in should be done as a matter of
course, so that none of the numerous fungoid diseases of potato would be
harboured.
Now for cultivation, manuring and planting. This is a
crop beyond all others which responds in earliness and yield to good
preparation and heavy manuring. It is not usual in the West Highlands to do
any autumn ploughing, and there is usually a sound reason for this in the
heaviness of the winter rainfall and the fact that we do not get enough
frost to help make tilth in autumn-ploughed furrow-slices set up high. We
can get our tilth easily enough in late winter if we take advantage of a
fine spell in February. A dressing of 12 to 15 tons to the acre of farmyard
manure should be carted on to the ground at that time and ploughed in as
deep as possible. The alternative to dung would be 20 tons of seaweed, but
better still would be a mixture of the two, composted together during the
winter. The value of seaweed in potato growing is that this manure contains
a goodly proportion of potash.
Artificial manures are also necessary if the best chance
is to be given the crop. The early potato districts of Ayrshire, Lancashire
and the Channel Islands often use 10 to 12 cwt. of artificials per acre, in
addition to the farmyard manure, but in our West Highland conditions I
should limit the quantity to 8 cwt., made up of 2½
cwt. of sulphate of ammonia, 4 cwt. superphosphate and 1½
cwt. muriate of potash. If dung has been replaced by seaweed, I should
drop ½ cwt. sulphate of ammonia and
½ cwt. muriate of potash—7 cwt. in all.
Potato manure can now be bought ready mixed, but crofters are advised to
purchase it co-operatively through some organization like the Crofters'
Supply Agency, which is Government-sponsored and non-profit-earning.
The mixed artificials should be sown in the drills before
planting, and planting should be done by two people together direct from the
chitting boxes. Movement of the seed might break the sprouts. Plant as early
in March as possible.
After-cultivation does not differ much from the treatment
of main-crop potatoes. Planting should not have been too deep, and earthing-up
should be done early. Spraying should not be necessary as the blight season
hardly starts before digging is in progress.
Finally, the dug crop should be sorted and cleaned so
that the buyers will have no cause to complain of the quality of the West
Highland product. I do not advise crofters to go headlong into this
specialized branch of potato growing, but when so many crofts are suited to
the crop, I should like to see a lot of quarter-acre trial plots this coming
spring. After that we can consider further development. Remember, the profit
is in the earliness, and it would be wise to arrange for marketing some time
ahead of digging, or days worth good money may be lost.
