The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1898-05-27
GROWING SEED POTATOES,
How Growing Best Potatoes For Seed
Differs From Average Culture.

Differs From Average Culture.
There ought to be business by itself
in growing potatoes to be used for seed.
The success of the crop always depends
very largely on the seed planted. It's
care after harvesting ought not to be
such as average farmers give to their
potato crops. For preparing the very
best seed the potatoes need to be exposed
to degree of sunlight that will entire
ly spoil them for market or for cooking.
Still more is it necessary that lie pota-
toes be well grown and ripened while
the foliage is untouched by the potato
beetle or it's larvae and uninlured by
the fungus which causes blight and
potato rot
In expressing the foregoing timely
ideas The American Cultiyator further
remarks that after the potatoes are har
vested it is well nigh impossible to Sc
lect from the bin the potatoes that are
sure to produce strong, vigorous hills if
cut and planted as seed. A we'll shaped,
smooth potato may have been the only
one fit for market that the hill which
grew it produced. 1t may have had its
foliage badly eaten by potato larvae or
be prematurely ripened when its vine
blighted. In some seasons, and last year
was one of them, very few potatoes
came to maturity without injury of
some sort. The quality of potatoes for
cooking has been very poor this year,
and for seed it is probably much worse.
The fact that potato is rough and
scabby and is "waxy" rather than
mealy when cooked is presumptiye evil
dence that it suffered either from blight
or its foliage was injured by the potato
larva. Only with healthy and whole
foliage can potatoes be grown that will
be fit for seed. There are always some
hills that are considerably injured by
the potato beetle. These the grower Of
potatoes for seed will throw out by
themselves when he is harvesting the
crop.
Potatoes thus grown will naturally
cost more than those taken from crops
grown and harvested the usual way. 1t
is not necessary for seed potatoes that
the tubers should be large. If we'll
ripened, medium and even. small pota-
toes are as good as any, though in
planting small tubers it is best to cut
out all the eyes except the strongest
one and then plant the whole potato. 1t
will produce stronger stalks than if
more than one bud is allowed to grow.
Much of the admitted advantage from
planting new Seeding potatoes comes,
in the opinion of the journal quoted,
from the fact that the interest of the
originator impels him to give extra care
to the growing of seed, and SO long as
he can sell it at much above usual po-
tato price he is pretty sure to maintain
the original vigor which every Seeding
potato starts out with. 1t is only when
the new variety gets into the hands of
those who are careless about growing
potatoes that the potato begins to 'srun
out, as it is commonly called. Even
the most prolific varieties, after eight
or ten years, become poor yielders and
are extremely liable to become affected
by blight And yet we have known
farmers who by careful selection and
care of seed potatoes were able to keep
the old fashioned Early Rose as a good
profitable potato to grow, and that with
out renewing this variety from seed, as
has often been done since.